Here’s a little reminder that if you have a bad blood sugar or bad day of blood sugars, it doesn’t make you a bad diabetic. I’m having a rough couple of blood sugar days, but my moments of failure don’t reflect on me as a person. In fact, some of them are just stupid fluke things because managing diabetes can be freaking hard. I went low at work because, even though I properly carb counted and dosed the right amount for my enchiladas, I didn’t even think to take into account that it was a high-fat meal so my insulin kicked in before my dinner did. And I couldn’t leave for work on time today because I had pre-bolused for my breakfast since I woke up a little bit high, then got caught up getting ready for work and didn’t eat my food quite soon enough.
It’s so easy to beat yourself up because, yeah, I could have done better. But type 1 diabetes is a 24-hour seven-day-a-week job and there’s just no way to be perfect all the time.
In the medical field we throw around this word “compliance” a lot and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You can be taking care of yourself and still have bad blood sugars. You can be taking care of yourself, and something happens and you can still go into DKA. Yes, if you actively make the choice to not pay a single drop of attention to your diabetes or refuse to take your insulin, sure, we could call that non-compliant. But that doesn’t make you a bad person either, and it doesn’t help to be told all the bad things that can happen if you don’t take care of yourself. What you really need is support. So here’s me, raising my hand along with everyone else in this online diabetes community to tell you that you’re not alone if you ever need someone to talk to. 🙋
And here’s me waving from the “I could do a better job” corner because we all have those days. 👋💁 Managing diabetes, and dosing and taking insulin, a drug that could literally kill you if you get it a little bit wrong is a pretty crazy thing. So if your diabetes day hasn’t been so great either, don’t beat yourself up too much. You keep yourself alive every day and that’s pretty amazing. ❤️
