Grieving for the Old Me

After the doctor told me that I am diabetic, I cried. I know that it's a totally treatable disease but I also know that it won't ever go away. I really did progress through all of the stages of grief in trying to understand being diabetic and added a couple stages of my own. 

Denial didn't last long and isolatipn was impossible. About 2 days after having to inject myself with insulin every night, I stood in my kitchen and just cried. And cried. And cried. That's when I realized this was really happening. It was not temporary like the flu. Isolation wasn't really possible, my family knew I went to the doctor and was as curious about the test results as I was. I didn't have time to adjust before people started trying to help. 

There was another form of isolation that I did choose. It came in the form of shame. Intellectually, I know that there are a lot of things that contribute to becoming diabetic but then there is the part of me who felt I had even failed at something so basic as eating. I didn't really want people to know I was diabetic. I mean, I am overweight so I knew where their mind would go. It's where mine went. It's my own fault that I am now diabetic. I also didn't want people judging every piece of food I put in my mouth. I was doing enough of that for everyone. 

After a couple of weeks, I realized that I couldn't really keep being diabetic a secret. I knew as people found out, it might hurt some feelings that I didn't tell them directly. I have two aunts that live near me so I called them first. I talked to each individually and as I feared, one went there. Went to the place of weight and eating and sweets and all the things I feared would be said if people knew. 
The other aunt knows better than  the old ways of thinking and was/is supportive. 

The bargaining really came between me and myself, not so much me and God, like in a death. Truthfully, it wasn't so much bargaining but telling myself that I had to make changes or I would only get sicker. Reminding myself of what I had seen with diabetes in the past and how I wanted the rest of my life to be. It was a similar discussion to the ones I'd had in the past with myself about things like losing weight but now it was a bonafide medical issue. 

Acceptance isn't something I've quite achueved yet. I still have moments  when I am injecting insulin that I just want to cry. I don't want to have to do this forever. I don't want yet another limitation in my life. 

It really isn't easy mentally to accept suddenly being diabetic. I don't even know how long I was diabetic before the diagnosis but according to other tests, I don't seem to have damaged my organs. 

Education has become a large step in the gieving proces for me. I had some preconceived notions as to what it means to be diabetic, escpecially for eating and learning what's real and what's myth has been very helpful. 

Having to change so much of my life to accommodate diabetes really is changing myself at a pretty basic level. 

Finding Out

A couple of months ago I went to the doctor, having insurance for the first time in recent years, and he ordered some standard blood work and was very thorough with questions about my symptoms and general health. I really didn't expect him to find anything cronic or serious wrong with me. 

Well, to be perfectly honest, my optometrist had suggested that my vision was deteriorating too fast for normal and that diabetes can have an impact on vision. So, I did have that in the back of my mind. 

A couple days later, my doctor called. Not a nurse or other staff, my actual doctor. When he said that my tests showed I was diabetic, it was hard to keep from crying until I hung up. I already had a follow-up visit scheduled but he had called prescriptions into the pharmacy and wanted me to start medication right away. 

He told me that my A1C levels were high and started me on a pill and slow release insulin shot. In the age of the internet, I had to look up and see just how far away from normal my level was. Well, that was a bit shocking. Normal appears to be 5.7 or less and my level was over 10. 

Not only was my newly discovered diabetes out of control, I was in danger of doing a lot of damage to other organs without treatment. 

I started the medication, right away and also started pouring through websites looking for help in understanding, controlling diabetes. 

My grandmother was diabetic. I really don't remember a lot about it except that she would have to give herself insulin shots and avoid sweets, which.. she wasn't always good at doing. 

My father developped type 2 diabetes late in life and was mostly controlled by medication due to his other health issues. It was found that my brother had type 1 diabetes when he was about 45 and he was working very hard to keep his levels good and make lifestyle changes to keep his under control. 

In hindsight, I should have expected that I would have diabetes.