Lately I've been feeling...not exactly burnout, but it's more like I'm just tired of all this management. We finally went out to about five different stores and bought a bunch of food yesterday today - exhausting in and of itself. Yet this will allow us to eat more meals at home and not have to eat out all the time. Since I'm a vegetarian, my low carb options are pretty limited, and then of course I love french fries. Still, I can only cover 49 grams of carbs initially (3.5 units), and if I eat more than that, I have to take another 1.5-2 units every 30-45 minutes. So, that means that a meal with 135 grams of carbs requires four injections to cover over the course of two and a half hours. I was handling that okay before we moved since it was very occasional, but with one or two meals a day like that, I guess I did start getting a little burned out. This is even with avoiding things like rice, pasta, and mashed potatoes. If I'm going to eat something, it has to really be worth the insulin.
I've also been feeling a bit isolated. This wasn't affected by moving, though. Whenever some other diabetic sees me somewhere testing my blood sugar or what have you, the first question they ask is "what type are you?" And I never know what to say to help them understand. There's no shorthand or helpful box for me. A friend suggested I join a diabetes support group so that I'd have someone to talk to, but the reality is that there aren't support groups geared toward people like me. I have more in common with Type 1s than Type 2s, but I don't think that they'd want me, either. And I just can't see myself sitting in a Type 2 support group saying I have no trouble avoiding sugar and I've been trying to gain weight most of my life - and I do think it would be totally justified if they felt uncomfortable. The other day, I joined a new forum and no one replied to my introduction post. It seems silly that something like that should bother me, but it somehow just underscored that I'm alone. It's kind of odd - my unusual medical conditions (dysautonomia, costochondritis, among others) never made me feel the way diabetes does. It was perfectly okay to be the only person in a 1000 mile radius with some condition and I never minded it. With diabetes, though, I just want to have something in common with someone else.
2 comments:
I agree that diabetes is extremely isolating. I think what makes it the most so, to me, is it's relentlessness; unlike other illnesses or conditions, with diabetes you must be aware and treating yourself every minute of every day. And it's only your responsibility, and it's unshareable.
Having a type that is undefineable must add to that, and I'm sorry to hear that you're feeling the strain. I hope things get easier soon.
For some reason your blog doesn't show up as being updated on bloglines when it is, so I don't know if other people are seeing your updates.
Thank you, Beth. Someone suggested to me recently that maybe I feel bad about it because I'm part of a group that I actually don't have much in common with which is more isolating than to be alone. Maybe she's right.
I'm not sure what was going on with Bloglines. I tried to look at it and it said that the whole website was down.
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