Monday, July 06, 2009

My inacurate picture?

I just love this! Again, from my "angry" follower......

Actually, I am not angry about the disease - well diabetes is actually an autoimmune disorder but let's not split hairs.
What I am upset about is the inaccurate picture you portray on your blog.
I know you get more negative comments than just my own because I have talked to other people who have posted them.
Do you know what you are doing to the diabetes online community? You say you are on here to seek support other people, but that is not what you do. You just vent YOUR anger. Who does that really help other than you?



First, you need to be very careful what you write to me. Look up the word "disease". It INCLUDES "autoimmune diseases" and that, my dear, includes autoimmune disorders!!! So, therefore, I will stick by my words.....diabetes IS a DISEASE!!! I'll split hairs with you any day! LOL!!!

Second. Yep, you have no idea how many negative comments I get from ANGRY diabetics. And I think I'll start posting and commenting on all of them if that's what it's going to take to prove my point. Which is.....

Third. This is MY blog. It is about MY life - living with a diabetic. It's not about being a diabetic. It's not about you. It's not about diabetes as a whole. It's about the finite life of one woman dealing with her own individual life and what goes on here. So of course, I vent my anger. That's why I started this blog. Duh!!! A Nurse Practitioner in the diabetic clinic actually told me to start writing down my feelings!!! I never set out to help anyone else. I chose an online blog because I just knew I was not alone in what I was going through. I now KNOW for a fact that there are numerous other spouses who deal with the very same thing that I deal with and I'm learning that many, many, many of them are much worse than me. But when I started this blog....I really thought I was the only person in the world dealing with this.

Fourth. Who does this blog help? Well, probably not the diabetic, that's for sure. But I imagine it does help other spouses. From the comments I've received, I believe that it does. There is comfort in finding out that you are not alone. There is peace in realizing that it is not you going crazy.....it is the diabetic having highs and lows, not remembering, that is the problem.

Fifth. I don't for one second believe I portray an inacurate picture. In fact, if you really read all the way through my past posts, I think if anything, some of them have been way too acurate! My husband's loss of bowel function for instance....brought on by neuropathy of the nerves in his intestines....couldn't get much more accurate than that!!!

Here's what I think. That the medical community wants to cover this up. After all, what kind of press would it be that a diabetic who has a normal A1c could possibly still be going high and low 24/7? Wow! Let that one leak out!!! And of course, they want their meds to cure it all, so the diabetic couldn't possibly be doing anything negative to the family, right?

And then you have the diabetic who can't remember what awful things they did to their family when they were "out of it". My adult step-chldren believe that they grew up with an abusive father. I have lived with him for 10 years. The only abuse I have seen out of him is when he is in a low. He was horrified when I read to him something his daughter had written about her memories of her childhood.....because he doesn't remember treating her that way at all.

So, all this leads me to believe that you (the writer of this comment,not the entire diabetic community) are in complete and total denial about what you do to those who surround you. I think most of the spouses would agree with me on that one. After all - when you drop into a low, you most often don't remember a thing you said or did while in that low, so how on earth would you know the impact you have on any of us?

It takes an incredibly strong spouse to stand up to a diabetic. The worry alone that you go through when he goes into a low is draining. The constant mopping....LOL!!! I could go on forever. I'm just not sure there is a diabetic out there who actually understands what a spouse goes through. I don't think it's possible because of the problem with memory loss during lows (and highs).

Denial is just a beautiful thing - as long as you are the person doing it. This blog is for those of us who continue to stay with our spouses, assist them, take care of them, love them.....while we watch them destroy their bodies and their lives one ounce at a time.

Go ahead, make another annonymous coumment for all the good it does - you seem to just be proving what I am writing about beyond a shadow of a doubt!!!

What I want the diabetic community to agree to is that this is YOUR disease, not mine. It is Your body, not mine.

I am here simply because I love my hubby. But in no way does that obligate me to put up with, endure, absorb, take in, deal with......anything related to HIS disease. I do it because I love him, not because some set of "rules" out there tells me that I have to. And once a spouse realizes that.....and realizes that they can change their mind at any moment and walk away from all this - that provides us with the freedom to continue on doing what we are doing.

This blog is also for anyone who has left a diabetic spouse. We undestand completely and totally - you did it to keep your sanity, you did it to survive.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder

Type 2 diabetes is not

Just to clarify