If you are having a hard time with your diabetes, there are some things you can do that might help.
Ask your health care team for what you need.
At your diabetes appointments, tell your doctor or nurse if you feel like you are being judged or not being listened to. The people who work in health care may not know how they come across.
Spend some time before your appointment thinking about what is important to you about “your” diabetes. Then, ask for the help, advice, and support you need to reach your goals.
Diabetes care is usually done by a group of people, and you have the right to ask for help from someone who has the right kind of knowledge. So, if you have a problem with your diet, make an appointment with a dietitian. If you feel stressed out or burned out because of your diabetes, ask to see a psychologist.
And if you are having practical problems, like lumpy injection sites that cause your blood sugar to go up and down all over the place or problems at work, ask to see a diabetes specialist nurse. If you don’t know what kind of professional can help you, explain your problem and ask, “Do you have a service or person who can help me with this?”
If nothing else works and you can’t get along with your main diabetes care provider or just don’t feel supported, ask for a new one.
At the end of the day, you are the one living with diabetes and doing the hard work, so you should feel like your health care provider is working with you and supporting you.
Treat yourself well.
No one is perfect, and it’s not easy at all to take care of diabetes. If you have a bad day, don’t let it carry over into the next one.
Don’t think of the amount of sugar in your blood as “good” or “bad.”
This sounds like a judgement, so use “high or low” or “on target” instead. If you have to fight with your sugar levels every day, you might want to go back to the basics. For example, humans are creatures of habit, so it’s easy to keep using the same injection site without realising that it’s becoming scarred and lumpy, which makes insulin absorption unpredictable.
Set yourself small goals that you can reach.
You might want to run a marathon someday, but you should start with a short run twice a week and build up from there. This will help you stay motivated by giving you small wins on a regular basis. For example, if you never check your blood sugar, you probably won’t be able to start doing it at least four times a day all of a sudden. Don’t even try. Start testing once a day for a week, which is more realistic, and work your way up to four times over a few weeks.
Talk about your diabetes with other people.
Help them understand what you’re going through and how it affects you. I hear a lot of good things from people who have taken that step and now (sometimes for the first time) feel heard, not judged, and no longer alone.
And I’d like everyone to remember that diabetes is a part of you that needs to be cared for, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t define who you are.
