Dear Anonymous,

You wrote this:

Thank you for taking the time to blog. I am really struggling. My husband is a diabetic. For some time now he has had me convinced I must be going crazy because I would cry, and still do, when he has his angry outburst. I have no one to talk to. He is a very public figure, who has been convinced by his peers that he is on top of his game - perfect life. He receives numberous community and church awards and honors. He's a good man and I dearly love him, but when he's angry he can be so cruel. I have never seen him check his sugar. I have bought him several testers. He has an answer for everything. I even went to my own doctor the other day and asked her if the things he says to me could me true. I am in menopause, which makes me even more sensitive. Can you suggest any good literature to help me out? I have thought about counseling, but he told me not to go without him. I said okay, let's go, but then he changes the subject. If I bring it back up... then here we go again. I am so tired of feeling bad about myself and walking on eggshells.


And nearly brought me to tears as this is just so much of me and I just want to wrap my arms around you and hug you. I completely and totally understand every single moment of your life. I hear my crys coming out of you in so many ways.

And I'm sad to say that there is not good literature out there. The best I have found is what each of us write in our blogs online. Just knowing there is another woman going through what I am going through makes that loneliness a little less alone. Reading that someone else is walking on eggshells, makes them a little less tender.

YOU ARE OK! IT IS NOT YOU! That is in caps for emphasis. This is one horrible, awful, terrible disease and those who have it have absolutly no idea the pain they inflict on their spouses. How can they? They don't remember what they say or do when they are in a true low or high. So if they don't remember....they also can't know. And yes, when he is angry, his cruel treatment of you can actually be totally intolerable. It is a form of abuse. Yet the abuser has no idea they are doing it and will have no remembrance of doing it either.

The thing that really scares me is that I have read of diabetics in lows who will actually strangle or physically harm their mates. So I say, first and foremost, that you have to protect you. If he becomes physical or violent....walk away. Keep a cell phone on you at all time and have it programmed so that one button gets it to 911.

Next, when he starts with the verbal barage or garbage....there are 2 things that I will do. First....get him food. Anything. Fake that you are starving and insist there is nothing in the house and get him to a restaurant. It's a public place. If he gets verbal, you have witnesses. But also, getting food in him does help. It's amazing.

Second, I will literally yell at him that he has to stop talking to me like that. I threaten to leave. I will go to great lengths to get his fight mechnism roaring....because then his blood sugars will increase and his anger will dwindle. Besides....99% chance he is not going to remember a single thing I say! But fighting with a sugar low is a very risky thing if he turns violent towards me.

I believe that most of us spouses just clam up and eventually leave. There is nothing written about this, nothing to support us, and a world of angry diabetics out there who are more than willing to jump on a blog just like this and tell us that we are the nuts, that we are the angry ones, that it is all our fault because we don't love our spouses enough, we don't care enough, we are not sufficient caregivers....oh, that list goes on and on and I'm sure I'll get plenty of anonymous comments for writing this.

But you know what? I have a growing body of evidence that I am right! I have been talking to not just spouses....but children of diabetic parents....adult children of diabetic parents....who are telling me the horrors that they endured as kids growing up in a household with this disease. And how it has impacted them as adults and that they still live with the constant nightmare of what an angry parent might say or do to them. And I very quietly sit and tell them, "it's not you. It has nothing to do with you. And your father/mother/aunt/uncle will most like have no recollection of what they said or did to you."

I blame the professionals and the medical field for not doing more research. But it's the same thing as the heart attack problem. Nerve endings die off. Connections are not made. Diabetics often die from heart attacks. The death certificate will list heart attack as the reason for death. Doctors do surgeries to try and "fix" the problem. NO ONE out there is doing the research to get the word out that it's the nerve endings dieing off from diabetes that causes these heart attacks. No one makes that connection....how stupid are our physicians?

And then you have diabetics like my hubby who will sit in front of a doctor AND me and lie point blank to them about his diet, what he is doing, his physical activity. So you can't really blame the doctors because the patients are in such denial that they can't fess up what they are really doing to themselves.

Find a diabetic nurse that you can go to and simply tell your spouse you are going to a nurse because you need help through your own menopause and they are making suggestions to you for diet and exercise. My own diabetic nurse has been a godsend to me through all of this. She has no problem telling me that I am normal and he is a diabetic. I know that. I really know that. But it is nice to hear it from someone else every now and then!

DW