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.
2 comments:
Howdy.
Saw this domain pop up in the slimstat panel of wordpress so I took a click on over to see. It appears you have a very young blog, and I wish you luck with it. I suppose blogging isn't for everyone but for me it has become a little bit of ritual every day to help sort out my thoughts, and if you find it useful to yourself then I encourage you to stick with it.
But anyhow, howdy to another of the 1 in 500. The only contact I have with other type 1's is through the realms of blogs and a couple of message boards, and I've found that it's an improvement over the feelings of isolation I had with things for much of my nearly 22 years of type 1 diabetes.
Thank you for what may be a kind overestimation of what I had written about the concept of type 1 diabetes inducing a state of persistent grief.
-owner of a completely inconsequential flux capacitor
You're perfectly welcome...like you the only contact I have with other diabetics (especially Type I) is online. It's improved my mental state of being IMMENSELY since I got my head out of the sand and started going "Hey, where is everybody else?!!" :)
Post a Comment