It has been 9 years since my diagnoses of T1. For me the only way I cope is through music I love playing drums, it allows me to get out my anger and my thoughts. Music is the only thing that gets me through the day, and I hope in the future I can share my music with other people.
Hey Jaz93!
Wow. Nine years. I’ll bet that a huge chunk of your life yeah? I have been a T1D parent for exactly three whole weeks. As you can probably imagine, I sure as heck am struggling to cope. Unfortunately I have no musical talent beyond singing loudly in the car, so I guess it’s good I found this forum. People keep saying thing like, “soon this will all be second nature” ,…is that true? I very much encourage you to start a band!
Hey jaz93,
I have been T1 for almost 40 years. Drums have been a great way to cope for me as well. It is a great escape and keeps your mind too busy to worry about all the BS of life like T1D etc. I also play piano which is a great diversion as well.
Keep up the good work. Do you have any tunes on line we can listen to?
If you want to hear some of mine, it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/user/boomboomdrums
Catapillar40, even though you don’t play, keep up the good work as well!
Hey jaz93,
It’s great that you have an outlet for your anger & frustration. I have had T1D for nearly 48 years (I’m 49+). I have made it this far by not letting the diabetes prevent me from doing things I want to do (travel, archaeology, etc). But lately I haven’t been coping too well. I’m just so damned sick of it! I have only minor complications but if I don’t learn to cope better, they will become major complications.
I went to the Type 1 Nation Summit in Dallas on Sunday & it motivated me to take better care of myself & try to reach out to other Type 1s. I’ve let myself get very isolated and I realized Sunday that it isn’t healthy. I would say stay involved in the message boards & go to local events so you can feel like you are not alone.
Anyway, that’s my suggestion, for what it’s worth. Good luck!
Awesome that you find playing the drums is a way to cope, jaz93. I’ve got 10 years of T1 under my belt, almost half my life, and I’m a singer. It’s interesting though, I wouldn’t call singing a way for me to cope, but I would definitely say it’s a way for me to express some of the feelings brought on by diabetes–especially the bad ones. We could be describing the same type of thing, but I guess I’d call it expression rather than coping. I use singing (and listening to music) as a way to feel emotion deeper, both the goods and the bads.
Keep up the drumming. The best part of music is sharing it with others, so find people you can make music with!