I had a conversation with someone today who said how annoyed she was with an acquaintance who proudly announced to her he knew the EMT's by their first names. He said he'd had to call them to 'scoop him off the floor' because his blood sugar was so out of whack. He called them often.
Here we are again; announcing negativity with pride! What the heck is this? There seems to be a psychology of some sort about the negative aspects in one's life. I've seen this before.
"I had a terrible cold last t week."
"Oh, my uncle had a bad cold for a month and he died!"
"I didn't have enough money to go out to eat as I usually do during the week."
"Wow, we didn't even have enough money to buy gas to get to work! We were scrounging around in the house, looking under the cushions just to get a few dollars."
What is up with this? It seems to be a quest for 'Can you top this?!'
I'll bet people get annoyed with me sometimes because I try very hard to be positive about any events that occur. If I don't have a positive attitude, maybe I'll succumb to thinking my challenges are too difficult? I don't think I have to be told the negative possibilities. A few times are enough. (Remember Mom finally closed the books on the negative stuff.)
Ten years ago a nursing class was discussing a partial amputation of a diabetic foot. One of the students next to me said,
"I have to remember that surgeon's name. My mother was just diagnosed with diabetes and she'll be needing that kind of care"
WHAT? Here I was more than 50 years as a Type 1 Warrior and never had that problem. Was the current thinking this is a given conclusion? I had been out of touch with the diabetic community as a whole as mentioned in earlier blogs.
It was then I decided to be more vocal about my success with Type 1 diabetes since childhood. I gave a few lectures to nursing classes. I came in with a short skirt so they could see I had my legs and told them I was a diabetic who wanted to be motivational and positive about diabetes. At the time I had just gotten an insulin pump and there were questions about it and about how I dealt with a sweet tooth. At the end of the session I asked people to guess how many years I had been a diabetic. Now remember, I had just received an award from the Joslin Instutite for "More than 50 years of Type I Diabetes".
"Five years".
"I said, "More than that."
They guessed from 10 to finally 20 years and then I said.
"I have been a Type 1 diabetic for more than 50 years."
I always wait for the gasp. Love it!
A young male nursing student came up to me afterward. He told me his doctor suspected he was a diabetic and wanted him to do the testing. Even though this young man had a blood sugar over 250, he didn't want to learn he was a diabetic. Now he said to me,
"After seeing I may not have to experience all those terrible complications, I'm going to get to my doctor and go about living as you have." That moment still brings tears to my eyes whenever I tell it.
I did see him a few montyhs later and he came up to me and thanked me. He told me he was taking care of his diabetes and expected to have as good a result as I did. I told him,
"You'll probably do even better. At your age, more is coming into the medical world to help or cure us and you have better resources than I ever did. I'm proud of you."
And I am.
Next week I'd like to consider what the medical community can say OR NOT SAY , that may help newly-diagnosed patients. I'll title it
Cut Out the Negative and Paste In the Positive
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