Does anybody else feel like they stress a little more because of their diabetes? Like if you start to strugglein school or have a fight with your family/friends that diabetes can just make you feel worse ?
OH YEAH! BIG time! I fight way more with my mom than on a normal basis (however normal a basis normal is) over numbers and why they might be too high and if I forget to tell her what supplies I need from the pharmacy when she goes or if I dont have the proper amount of numbers a day or if my A1C goes up....on and on! Plus I stress alot over thinking about the future of diabetes, like how long I'll actually live to if my kids will have it to how I'll do with it in college! I wish we should think up some ways to releive this stress on ourselves from diabetes but it looks a little impossible because the only way to do that is to get rid of the diabetes or do so well with it that it doesnt cause stress but that sounds impossible to....I depend mostly on music as a stress reliever. I listen to my fave songs in my room for hours....farthest away from the world and diabetes is there. :) Try it some time! :D
I feel at times I stress more because of my diabetes. I really think though for me at least, I tend to get more stressed when my sugars are in the lower stages. I have mentioned this before, but when I go low at least my mind loses some control over it. We have talked about how lows sometimes make us do/say things regret. I think this is the same with stress, it affects you more and I tend to react over the top when this happens.
I have a 6-hour timed examination in a month or so that matters in a really big way for my career. And one of the things that terrifies me the most about this disease is that under pressure I may have a hypoglycemic reaction and not be as sharp as I need to be to outperform some pretty formidable competition. Diabetes makes all those things more complicated and much harder for a diabetic than for a guy who can just go in and focus on the task-at-hand. It does add another wrinkle to things.
Ugh me too ! And my mom is always telling how i'm gonna go blind or get kidney failure or die in my 20's and all of this other crap if I don't take care of it but she doesn't understand that I'm doing the best that I can at 15! I have school to worry about too! and i have a boyfriend and my friends that i want to talk to and hangout with and she makes it difficult to talk to her about my diabetes and whenever she tells me i'm going to freaking die i cry! grrr. I usually do the same thing, listen to music in my room for hours and just lay on my bed.
I am stressed constantly about diabetes related stuff. Counting carbs, making sure to take my insulin, bringing enough food or things to cover me on trips, having a baby, complications the list goes on and on. All these things can really take a toll after a while but just make sure you know how to handle it if you think things are heading out of control. If you need to talk to family or friends or even hop on the computer and tell us its better than holding it in ! plus we on juvenation know how you feel so its n ice knowing there are others going through the same things to make us not feel alone!
Wow, Jessica you sound sooooo much like me. I have been T1 for 21 yrs. I got it really young so my mom took care of me. As I got older I kinda just knew she would take care of me so I never stepped up. I tried, but I didn't really care if I did my best or not because someone was ALWAYS there. So...fast forward. I am 24 now, married and we are wanting to start a family. I have always had high A1C's (like 10+) but never had a bad report on my eyes or my kidneys or anything. That meant that whenever doctors told me of all the potential threats i would just roll my eyes and think how stupid and wrong they were. Well, I just recently went to the eye dr and found out I have macular edema. It comed right before Retinopathy. I FREAKED OUT! I was pretty mad and scared and confused.
I totally get what you are saying about fighting with you mom. My mom and i are great friends but if she nagged me about testing or got on my case because of my sugars, I would get so nasty. I just felt like I knew what I was doing and she should leave me alone. I also had this same feeling toward a lot of my doctors. i hate when they use scare tactics. I think it is so stupid to threaten someone with consequences when they are trying. You didn't get this disease because you made a bad choice or anything. I totally understand where you are coming from.
All I can tell you is that I hope you fine a better way to treat it than I did. I was soooo lucky for so long and now I worry a lot about it all catching up with me. I don't want to be sickly or make life harder for my husband. I don't want to have babies with birth defects. I wish I had found a happy medium earlier! One other thing to be aware of- Diabetes has a lot of chemical influence. I think I was depressed a lot in my teen years. Especially with numbers running that high so often. It made it really hard to care about taking better control or listening to anyone. It really just made it hard to do much of anything. Don't get me wrong, I had a really fun, normal life. I played sports, traveled, had a bunch of friends, but I think i just carried around that burden of depression.
I hope some of this helps you. Feel free to hit me up with questions. I totally don't want to preach to you. I'm not a lecturer, i just read your post and felt like I was listening to myself and the things I wrote are things that had been told to me, but I never heard until now.
Good luck!
Jenny
I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels like this but, even though I do stress sometimes about a lot of things, I think my worst fear is having a child that is diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. You know I don't mind needles, or pricking my fingers, or doctor visits, or better diets and exercise, but I guess I would just feel guilty if I passed this along.
I know I'm really stessed right now, I mean worring about enough supplies, covering meals and just the day to day stuff. I know the feel and am going through a mild depression partly beacuse of it and the news that I now have thryoid cancer to. So lately I've let the numbers and some of the other habits slide. But hopfully soon we could have a cure or made even get the drug compaines give us a break on supplies(prices!!!!) and have more understanding from those who aren't like us!!!!!