Teaching a new dog old tricks...

These are exciting times for a diabetic. Over the last few decades, modern medicine has made huge strides in the treatment of diabetes. We have all kinds of cool gadgets and machines that help us monitor and manage our disease, enabling us to live much longer, fuller lives.


We have a bizzilion different glucose meters available to us, including continuous monitoring, and meters that can read our blood ketone levels as well. Almost all meters these days hold a large number of results, and will give you your daily average over time, and even break it down into before and after meals, and more. Some are very advanced, like the Bayer Didget, targeted for kids. It hooks up to your Nintendo system, and your computer, for game playing. There is even a glucose meter/cell phone combo. Wow, talk about technology!


We have a wide variety of insulin these days, and multiple insulin delivery systems. There is the old standby, the vial and syringe method, as well as insulin pens, both refillable and disposable, and pumps of course! There are other methods on the horizon, including insulin patches, and inhalable insulin (it was briefly on the market from 2006- 2007, but withdrawn).


I think of the current diabetic times as the “pump era”. A wide variety of insulin pumps are available to us diabetics now, changing the lives of so many, and allowing for a much tighter glucose control than would have been previously possible.

So why, in these advanced diabetic times, are so many diabetics (myself included) failing when it comes to caring for themselves? Why do we seem to still struggle so hard to maintain good daily numbers and A1C’s in the normal range?


I look for the answer in the wisdom of our diabetics, people who have lived with diabetes for most of their lives, some, 40-50, and more, years. They are “old dogs” when it comes to this disease, and they, unlike us, have lived through “the worst of times” when it came to diabetes management.


These older diabetics were around before we had glucose meters. That amazes me. Can you even IMAGINE what that would be like? To NOT know what is going on inside your body? To have NO clue what your numbers are at any given time? I am seriously attached to my meter, it goes everywhere I go. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my glucose level, before I even get out of bed. My meter is my best friend these days.


So, I wonder what these long term diabetics know that I do not. Even with all this technology I can’t keep my numbers in a healthy range. I think our older diabetics know a lot of “old tricks” that I have not yet learned, like listening to what your body is telling you, and to really get to know yourself, and how you feel, from hour to hour each day. Maybe this is the advantage that they have over me/us, they didn’t rely on a “machine” to tell them where they stood, and what to do, they relied on their own intuition.


I have a tendency to bumble through life, going “dee dee dee”, paying little attention to myself, or how I am feeling, and just randomly check my glucose levels, with no rhyme or reason. I have caught many highs and lows with this slapstick method, but I wonder, how many did I miss because I didn't/don't know my body well enough to recognize the early symptoms. Before the next time I check my level, I will stop, take a deep breath, and consciously FEEL my body. I will LISTEN to what it says to me, and how I really feel at that exact moment in time. Maybe my body will tell me more than my glucose meter tells, and maybe, because I am listening, I will remember it for future reference.

I am a “new dog” learning “old tricks” from our long term diabetics. Thank you for sharing your secrets of life with me.

Now go listen to some good music!