9Jan/102
Diagnosis Fallout and T-2 guilt
As I mentioned in my last post, I learned about my diagnosis as a T-2 diabeticin a letter I received when I got home from work on a Friday afternoon. My reaction, to which I lost that first weekend, was guilt -- a deep, abiding shame I'm not 100% over to this day.
See, my dad is also T-2. When he was diagnosed, somewhere around twenty years ago, he laid out for me what he'd learned about the disease and that I'd likely have a much better future if I could get in shape. So, I'd had fifteen or twenty years to get my act together, and I'd failed. Pretty miserably, too.
As i now know, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle do not cause type two diabetes. A substantial percentage of newly diagnosed T-2s are in pretty good shape, and I think I read the other day that only 25% of morbidly obese people (those 100 or more pounds overweight) have diabetes. It's known that there are genetic factors as well. It's also believed that there are "environmental factors" that are not yet understood. In sum: being overweight did NOT cause my diabetes.
But, even with all that said, it's still true that, had I lost my excess weight, I might have delayed the onset of diabetes, perhaps for a very long time. And, if I am able to change my lifestyle now, I dramatically increase my chance of avoiding serious complications.
Maybe.
The devil's not in the details, he's in the maybes. It's in that forest of maybes that my residual shame resides.
So I spent that first weekend in a pretty negative space. I felt sorry for myself, sure, but mostly I felt ashamed OF myself. It was several days before I even managed to tell my sister, with whom I've been closed for many years.
By Monday, though, I'd come to some degree of peace was ready to start looking for resources. I'm so grateful that there were resources available.
9Jan/100
Oh, the temptation….
I *love* ramen noodles, and before diagnosis, I ate a *lot* of them. Now, they're an occasional treat, and probably should be a very rare treat.
9Jan/100
My diagnosis story
I almost always find diagnosis stories to be interesting. Even for type 2 diabetics like myself, diagnosis tends to result from some sort of crisis, whether it be a life-threatening high, the onset of complications, or just a doctor's visit resulting from persistent fatigue or other early symptoms. I was a little luckier.
About six months before I was diagnosed, I began experiencing the classic symptoms of thirst and frequent urination. Like many folks, though, I didn't really think of the thirst as being unusual - it was the bathrooms trips that kinda bothered me. Did I secretly suspect the truth, down in my heart of hearts? Yes -- or, rather, no: the 'truth' I was hiding from was my suspicion that I was developing prostate problems. The thought scared me, though - my dad had had prostate surgery - and I took no action.
A couple of months before diagnosis, I had an opportunity to join a weight loss program at my workplace. I made some pretty big changes: I quit drinking sugared soda (boy, had I been guzzling that!), generally ate more sensibly, did some exercising, and lost about 20 pounds. (Alas -- they haven't stayed lost.) Guess what? I also quit living in the bathroom, and I now know that I pretty much stopped having symptoms. So, when I went in for my physical, I just expected a pat on the back and encouragement to keep going.
Since I have a T-2 father, the doctor must have ordered an A1c as part of my blood work. (The prostate was fine.) A couple of weeks later, when I got home from work on a Friday, I had a letter (!) informing me that I had diabetes and that I needed to make an appointment for a follow-up. (I learned later that my A1c had been 9.5.)
Now that I can think back on the months before diagnosis with some knowledge, a number of things make more sense. Not only had the amount of fluid I was drinking been pretty extraordinary, but my eating (before beginning that diet) was completely out of control -- I must have been eating hundreds of carbs a day. I'm blessed that I didn't eat my way into serious hyperglycemia. There were other things, as well, that might have tipped a more knowledgeable person off to what was happening in my body.
How did I react to my diagnosis? That's a topic for another day.
Categories
- Cooking
- Diabetes and Physical Health
- Mental Health
- Personal Change
- Poetry and Fiction
- Reprints
- Uncategorized