{"id":11906,"date":"2010-11-15T09:02:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T14:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906"},"modified":"2016-01-03T10:50:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T15:50:58","slug":"the-language-of-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"

My family didn\u2019t believe in being sick. Being sick was a sign of weakness, a sign of being needy, and neediness was bad. We were Stockwells<\/em> who could trace our ancestry all the way back to the Mayflower. We believed in moderation and hard work, in doing things ourselves. When Mom got sick she was \u201cfighting something,\u201d as if to be sick was to lose a battle. Dad believed you could battle sickness with your imagination, and that the body could be talked out of being sick. Whenever I had a cold, he would tell me to visualize my white blood cells as polar bears coursing through my veins, fighting the sickness. \u201cTell yourself: I am healthy,\u201d he suggested, as if my body would listen.<\/p>\n

When I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 14-years-old, my body wasn’t listening.\u00a0 I remember sitting on the hospital bed in the children\u2019s ward with IV\u2019s coming out of a bumpy vein in my arm and hearing the word diabetes<\/em>.\u00a0 In my head it sounded fat, a word with the B<\/em> in the middle so you had to close your mouth around it, your lips sticking together and punching out the B<\/em> and the etes<\/em> kept going like an echo. Diabetes, Diabetes<\/em>. I hated that diabetes sounded like die<\/em> and that at 14 years old, I was no longer invincible.<\/p>\n

The term, \u201cdiabetes\u201d was derived from the Greek word for \u201csiphon\u201d because the water drunk by people who were sick with diabetes seemed to run right through their bodies like a siphon. Years later, when researching the history of my disease, the image of a siphon was fitting. I discovered that in 1674 an Englishman Thomas Willis published, \u201cThe Diabetes or Pissing Evil.\u201d Willis observed that the urine produced by people with diabetes was different from the drink taken in, and sweet as if it were \u201cimbued with honey.\u201d In the 1700\u2019s \u201cMellitus,\u201d the Latin word for sweet\/honey was added to the definition when physicians discovered that the urine of diabetics was sweet to the taste and heavy with sugar.<\/p>\n

Regardless of its origins, when I was diagnosed twenty-five years ago, the word diabetes just sounded like darkness, death and disease – like a bad dream, it was as if I\u2019d slipped down a hole into another world, Alice in Wonderland style, and couldn\u2019t speak the language. All I knew was that my body had stopped working. Everything had been fine, but something had happened, and suddenly my cells were waging a war inside my body, a failure of communication.<\/p>\n

In the first few months after my diagnosis, what I remember most about the language of diabetes was learning words like: food exchanges, free foods, starches, complex carbohydrates, protein, glucose, insulin-regular and nph-test strips, complications, amputations, retinopathy, kidney failure, seizures,<\/em> and chronic illness<\/em>. I remember feeling like I had crossed some invisible line, from healthy and young to old and sick. I remember going to doctor\u2019s appointments and sitting in waiting rooms with old, sick people (there was never anyone who looked like me) and thinking how did I get here? I remember reading the diabetes magazines that were always in the waiting rooms, and being scared by the stories of complications and the ads for diabetic socks on the back page. When my doctor told me I could do everything my friends could do, that diabetes wouldn\u2019t change my life, I remember wondering how I was going to go back to school and explain what had happened, and what I had become. Was I sick or was I healthy? Did I have type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes; was I a diabetic or a young woman with diabetes? I wanted to know how I was supposed to tell my friends who I was if I didn\u2019t have the words.<\/p>\n

Now, after all these years with diabetes, I\u2019m still not sure that I am fluent. I can talk about basal and boluses and thankfully there is no more need for words like \u201cexchanges,\u201d but after hundreds of years, the language of diabetes remains unclear because we are a large and varied community of both healthy and sick.<\/p>\n

Diabetes is an umbrella term that includes type 1, type 2, LADA, and gestational, which creates a lack of cohesion and identification. It’s a disease that includes everyone from marathoners to amputees. Diabetes suffers and loses strength because it varies so much, and perhaps from this comes the inability to name ourselves. Unlike other illnesses such as breast cancer, diabetes has struggled to create a strong identity to market itself. Diabetes is confusing because the nature of the disease and how we treat it, for the most part, depends on how we care for ourrselves. Cancer patients are treated by doctors. We get our prescriptions, A1c\u2019s and advice from doctors, but we take care of ourselves.<\/p>\n

Diabetes will always be different in each person who has it, and because of that the way to find unity and identity all comes down to words.\u00a0 If we struggle to separate ourselves into groups and types and argue about whether we have diabetes or are diabetic, we all lose. There is strength in numbers, and I want to speak freely and clearly. I want to find the words that illustrate what I\u2019m feeling. Instead of having a \u201cseizure\u201d I am low, instead of following a \u201cdiabetic diet\u201d I follow a \u201chealthy eating\u201d plan, instead of living with \u201crestrictions\u201d I live with \u201cmoderation,\u201d instead of worrying about \u201ccomplications\u201d I take care of myself to avoid future \u201cchallenges.\u201d These are just some ideas. Google diabetes slang and you\u2019ll find a wealth of fun suggestions from \u201cshooting up\u201d to \u201cinsulinate.\u201d<\/a> That\u2019s the thing about language, it\u2019s in flux, always changing and there is room for correction. I have diabetes and I am a diabetic. I think if we don\u2019t know what to call ourselves, we won\u2019t have a voice.<\/p>\n

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Diabetes will always be different in each person who has it, and because of that the way to find unity and identity all comes down to words…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":11934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Language of Diabetes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cDiabetes\u201d was derived from the Greek word for \u201csiphon\u201d because water drunk by people who were sick with diabetes seemed to run right through their bodies...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amy Stockwell Mercer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906\",\"name\":\"The Language of Diabetes\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Language-of-Diabetes-home1-rotated.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2010-11-15T14:02:34+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-03T15:50:58+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/a03d723350e4b9292acf9fb11cef9403\"},\"description\":\"\u201cDiabetes\u201d was derived from the Greek word for \u201csiphon\u201d because water drunk by people who were sick with diabetes seemed to run right through their bodies...\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Language-of-Diabetes-home1-rotated.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Language-of-Diabetes-home1-rotated.jpg\",\"width\":342,\"height\":600},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=11906#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Language of Diabetes\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\",\"name\":\"ASweetLife\",\"description\":\"The Diabetes Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/a03d723350e4b9292acf9fb11cef9403\",\"name\":\"Amy Stockwell Mercer\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79326b3f4704e98c854ba68bf032355f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79326b3f4704e98c854ba68bf032355f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Amy Stockwell Mercer\"},\"description\":\"Amy Stockwell Mercer is a freelance writer living in Charleston, SC with her husband and three sons. 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