GrindingGears , 5 months ago

So I mean I can’t speak for this guy, but I’m Type 1, and a terrible med person, so there’s a few things I feel like I can address personally:

Points 1 And 2) I’m legit bad at taking my medication. It’s not doing it out of malice or with ill intent, I’m just absent minded and my life can be chaotic and distracting. I’m a senior-ish executive with young children - from the moment I open my eyes till the moment I close them it’s either work, my wife, my kids or something else asking for or taking my attention, and I just forget, legit. I had a pretty bad infection from something a little while ago, and I took the antibiotics like a good little soldier until about day 4, when I inevitably start sliding, and by day 7, I just plain forget. My wife nags me, I set them out and they inevitably just get cluttered over by something else, and well yeah, out of sight out of mind, and then thats me not taking my medication.

For someone like me, it’s like if I’m in agony, then yeah I’ll take something. Minute I’m not though, it starts sliding in my attention span. Even with insulin and diligently checking my blood sugars, heck even if I’m low or whatever, you just get complacent. Life’s distracting, and this is something I have to deal with day in day out, it’s no longer novel or exciting and sometimes I just don’t pay attention to it. Until it’s happening to you personally, not clinically, like I completely understand your confusion, but I’m not sure you can completely understand where someone like myself or this guy is coming from, until you are living what we experience. It’s just one of those things thats hard to justify, and everyone ends up all confused and basically starts shaming you for it. That isn’t going to fix it, how it usually (temporarily) helps me in this situation, is to have someone set temporary goals and then we work from there. You’ll have to trust me when I say I’m the bane of my diabetes educators existence.

Even that all said, let’s just thank the lucky stars my version of this disease for whatever reason isn’t as crazy as some peoples, I still generally take care of myself, I have good a1c values and I’m generally doing well. I tend towards lows and highs sometimes, but I mean the disease is just a fucking mystery sometimes, it doesn’t always respond to the meds, and I also do think the medical professionals sometimes don’t fully comprehend that. They are used to being like here’s a pill, oh you’ll be fixed. Sometimes diabetes is just like BOOM curveball, because there’s a full moon or it’s a low pressure system blowing in, or whatever. It’s a fuck of a disease, both types 1 2 and I guess what they call 3 now. And I mean this can come out of left field and next thing you know you are laying on the floor. Now while this somehow has still never happened to me yet (and hopefully never does), I totally get how it happens. I’ve def come close a few times, and it happens in what feels like seconds (which is probably minutes or hours, but you are on a different brain wave pattern when you are ultra high and ultra low).

This also happens to be a point you get to mind wise where you just completely zone out. My wife calls it the voodoo zone. My IQ goes from like whatever it is to about 20 when I’m in the voodoo zone. I also have a trigger fuse temper when I’m in this state, and I usually am basically a raving lunatic who doesn’t always make any sense. I do realize it is happening sometimes, but something in my brain just refuses to connect the dots with the fact that I’m angry over usually nothing and I need to maybe check my sugar. I’ve had moments where like I’m calmly trying to explain something to my wife and she’s got this look on her face, and she isn’t getting it, so you get madder and it’s like why aren’t you getting this, and the poor person on the other side is listening to someone who isn’t even really speaking they are just moaning and slurring words. Sometimes someone has to snap you out of it, and when there’s not someone to do so, then you have what’s happening to this guy, at least by the sounds of it. I’ve had this happen at both extremes, super high and being super low (mostly super low though).

As for point 3) Blood thinners just legit scare me. So I’m supposed to take a 5mg cholesterol pill and a 5mg blood pressure pill, for “preventative” sakes. Again, I never take them, and that’s not great like even I will outright admit that. But they scare me. For whatever reason they don’t make me feel that great. My blood pressure is pretty much the same no matter what. My chol and blood pressure are still within acceptable range, but higher as my disease is progressing and I’m just getting old, fatter and fed up with the bullshit of day to day life (mostly work related), so I mean I def should be taking them. But I told my doctor, I’m not touching a blood thinner. Too many horror stories. Plus you always read the signs at the amusement parks and whatever, and they just sound horrifying and life limiting. I still want to live like I’m young and crazy. It just makes me uncomfortable, and it sounds like it’s going to limit me. Am I still going to be able to go 1,000 mph on my mountain bike in the mountains for instance? There’s always lots of crashing and lots of blood donated. So probably not (and I’m maybe even just imagining this, I dunno). So for better for worse, I mean if it’s life or death, then I’ll re-evaluate, but until then, no way Jose.

Also to speak to the phone and passive aggressiveness, some people are just, for lack of better words, fucking assholes. If you ever figure out why or how to fix this, please message me at your first opportunity and spill the beans on how to bring an end this endless parade of douchebags. Because it’s legit a world wide epidemic.