Diabetes Blogs

Are awesome. I'll post more on that when I have time (cripes, I really want to post on this thing more often...but am I making time? NO!)

Anyway, was reading comments to a post on Scott's Diabetes Blog, and this one damn near made me cry at work. Touched a nerve? Hell yeah it touched a nerve (and I haven't been diabetic for 21 years.)

"Howdy.

I've gotten now with type 1 for 21 years and 10 months, but who's counting? But that's a way of saying that I've had my time to think about it, but then no one with type 1 diabetes can't think about it. Well you can, but it requires a pretty harsh level of denial.

I've come to think that as a type 1 diabetic, it's like being in a constant state of grieving. Psychological models describe the 5 stages of grieving like this:

1. Denial
2. Bargaining
3. Anger
4. Despair
5. Acceptance

There is nothing wrong in feeling those things. The big question tends to be how much we can maintain acceptance of what has happened and what it means for us to live. I think very few type 1 diabetics are ever fortunate enough to find complete acceptance of what has happened, and for those few it just may be their inborn nature.

For me almost every day I find instances of the 4 stages before acceptance creeping in, or finding some event to come to the front of my mood. Fortunately, I've pretty well eliminated denial, but bargaining still shows up, anger happens over the little insults (that my fingertips are often sore while I work at the keyboard, that the large majority of people don't understand what it's like to live with the constant fear of complications) and despair, those black moments when I wish I could close my eyes for 8 hours or perhaps even longer without any thought whatsoever."

The eloquent blogger above is the completely inconsequential flux capacitor, by the way.

Accountability

That's what I have in mind here, for this blog. Oh no, I am a blogger now! I have a history of being sporadic with my journals. First it was a diary with gold-edged pages and a broken lock. Then it was scribble.nu, then it was livejournal.com. Maybe I stop writing in them because I outgrow the me that was on those early pages - you know, you look back on those first entries with the not-so-appreciative wince . . .

I hope this doesn't happen this time. As far as I know, Blogger is pretty stable. As far as I know, my diabetes is here to stay. That's what this blog is supposed to be about. Yeah, I know, diabetes isn't the end all and be all of my existence. But it's a stranger that's come into my life and that influences me more intimately than anything else in my life. I didn't choose to associate with this thing, but here I am - we share my BLOOD.

My goals are:

• to use this blog as a personal diary of my diabetic story, because we all need to vent/whine/cry/rejoice/ponder sometimes
  
• to use this blog as goal record. If I type it here, I want to do it, whether it's getting my A1C below 6.5 or eating a cookie and keeping my postprandial numbers in check.
  
• to use this blog to explore the diabetes community and advancements in diabetes research
  
• to crap on a bit in general.
  

Even though I trudge on daily with my personal diabetes, and it's largely a lonely journey, I'm hoping that this blog might provide some personal insight for myself and other concerning not only my story but the stories of other diabetics (people with diabetes, whatev). That's the best part about finding these communities and blogs - that ME TOO feeling.