{"id":12532,"date":"2010-12-06T05:49:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T10:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=12532"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:47:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:47:26","slug":"holland-endocrinologists-and-a-guy-named-nico-why-im-writing-a-blog-about-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=12532","title":{"rendered":"Holland, Endocrinologists, and a Guy Named Nico: Why I\u2019m writing a blog about diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Getting diabetes while living in Holland<\/strong>. Being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 17 and living with a host family in a foreign country was in some ways a blessing.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019m not one to talk about diabetes improving my health or affecting my life for the better in general; it&#8217;s hard to get around that it&#8217;s a pain.\u00a0 But it was a blessing in that it allowed me to make the disease my own, as during my first six months of being diabetic, I didn\u2019t have anyone around me who knew how much insulin I gave myself, when I tested, or what the test results were.\u00a0 In many ways, this has made it easier to fit diabetes into most aspects of my life on my own.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>I never seemed to get along with endocrinologists.<\/strong> Perhaps because of the independence I developed around how I treated my diabetes, I found it tough when people asked a lot of questions. This was particularly true with doctors who would always ask how much insulin I gave myself at meals, which for me was generally a changing number.\u00a0 I\u2019d normally respond: \u201cit depends on high my sugar is, what I\u2019m eating, if I plan to work out, if I\u2019m trying to avoid low reactions&#8230;\u201d or other lengthy responses.\u00a0 It seemed to confuse them, and over time I eventually just gave them what they were looking for: \u201c5 units for breakfast and 8 for lunch.\u201d\u00a0 At least it shortened the conversation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>What those last two blurbs have in common. <\/strong>Those are both examples of me not letting my diabetes be anyone else\u2019s.\u00a0 I was always comfortable letting people know I\u2019m diabetic, but never wanted to get into conversations about my diabetes.\u00a0 Not with my friends, my parents, doctors, or really anyone. Perhaps you\u2019ve had my typical conversation: \u201cYes, I give myself shots, no it doesn\u2019t really hurt, yes it\u2019s ok if I eat cake, well I wouldn\u2019t say having the disease is <em>no big deal<\/em>, but no you shouldn\u2019t feel sorry for me&#8230;\u201d next topic.\u00a0 The experience of being Type 1 seemed too wide-reaching to wrap it into a conversation about cake or needles.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>A \u201cmedical narrative\u201d in college. <\/strong>When<strong> <\/strong>I was a freshman in college, a senior in my dorm named Nico asked if he could write a medical narrative about my life as a diabetic for a class he was taking.\u00a0 He was a pretty soft-spoken guy who exuded kindness and listening skills the minute you meet him.\u00a0 So I said no problem.\u00a0 I sat down in his room and he said: \u201cTell me about life with diabetes.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cI&#8217;m not sure, you gotta be a bit more specific.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cWhat\u2019s it like to have diabetes?\u201d\u00a0 Which didn\u2019t help specify much, but I started talking.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what I said.\u00a0 But I kept talking.\u00a0 And talking.\u00a0 And talking.\u00a0 I ended up going for an hour without stopping.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>So back to the title: why I\u2019m writing a blog about diabetes. <\/strong>Whenever I think back to that medical narrative, I\u2019m reminded that I have a lot to say about this disease.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those things that has some impact on almost everything I do.\u00a0 I think this is true for all of us.\u00a0 It\u2019s always somewhere in the back of our minds.\u00a0 But for me, it just stays there, and when it comes up, I keep the conversations short.\u00a0 But when Nico was an audience that wanted to listen to <em>the narrative<\/em>, not to put me into the endocrinologist\u2019s 65 carbs\/13 = 5 units formula, or the \u201cshouldn\u2019t you not eat a cookie\u201d basket, or the \u201cwhere are your A1Cs\u201d evaluations people in the diabetes world often ask, I could talk about it for ages.\u00a0 And I enjoyed that and felt I had interesting experiences to relate.\u00a0 Perhaps this will be a good place for discussing that narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","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":[1501],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.9 (Yoast SEO v22.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Getting Diabetes While Living in Holland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cTell me about life with diabetes.\u201d I said, \u201cHuh? 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