As cool sounding as the name Diabetes is, this name is wrong for us. I hate it because I have to share it with people who do not have our disease!
The confusion, miss treatment, ignorance, and prejudice we all receive because we share a name is uncalled for. The physiology, the treatment, or the severity of the disease is not the same. Even the general age range of those effected are on the OPPOSITE sides of the age scale!! So in all seriousness, we need a different name
Sizzle, that is my rant for the day...
On a later note,
While I've started saying the names differently and using that
medicare guy to my advantage- I call type 2 "diabeetus" and call type 1
"diabetes." It has made me slightly happier.
lol i totaly get it i hate when new friends look at me like what is that and what are you doin if we go out to eat and they dont know i'm diabetic and i spend the whole nite explaining it and one of them are like yea my grandpa has type two i know what your talkin about and then i have to go bad and re-explain the difference between type 1 n type 2 like my anatomy teacher didn't even know the differnce or much about either one and its so stupid cuz they do just see the word diabetes or diabetic and think we are all the same but that is FAR FROM THE TRUTH but i take those chances to explain and so at least one more person in the world can be a lil more educated in a very unknown growing world problem.
but on another note i think why thy dont have different names is because when diabetes was first descovered (lol if you can say that) they didn't know there were two different types and the fact that it has to do wit the same part of your pancreus cuz ours just straight up dose not work and theres just dosen't work right and is treated completely differnet and really its just retared cuz theres only two things or three main things i can think of that T1 and T2 have in comen and thats the problem is your pancreus function, you have to pay attion to your food and i know some T2 that have to take insulin
i hate when people think type 1 and 2 are the same it really pisses me off and i cant stand that people think they know more about it then me yeah ok your the expert because u test you bs every 3 hours and give shot! yeah right these people dont have the first clue what it is and they are idiots for thinking that they know more about diabetes than an actual diabetic!! sorry i dont mean to be mean for calling people idiots but certain things just make me so mad!!
I have a huge rant about Type 2 should have different name and all my friends know it. When one of them mixes up, they hear about it. I wish more than anything that they had different names. I am so sick of telling people that I have diabetes and getting this look like "how? you're not fat"
I agree totally! This is a HUGE aggrevation of mine. When you're young and say you have diabetes people either have no clue what it really is or think it's "no big deal" because LOTS of people have diabetes...like "my Grandpa had that..." This really bugs me....First of all - when you're a little kid and are diagnosed - at least for me , I was not so eager to tell my friends when I was 7 that I was a diabetic because I was afraid they'd think I had a contagious disease or that they would treat me differently.
So many people, when you say that you are a diabetic, don't realize the difference between type 1 and type 2 and certainly do not understand the differences in severity. For example - I work at a physical rehabilitation center. Most of the patients that we have are over 50 and are overweight which led to them needing knee or hip surgery and poor lifestyle choices and obesity also led to their type two diabetes. Most of these patients are able to control it by diet and oral meds. I have had more than one coworker tell me that it was 'no big deal' that I was a diabetic because over half of the patients that we had were a diabetic...Well - I finally got really upset one day and told one particular coworker that yes there are many people that come in here with type two diabetes which can be controlled by a pill and less cookies and sodas....that they often times "asked for it" in a way by poor lifestyle choices for most of their life (although of course that's not always the case) and if they lost weight and changed their way of eating and started excercising a lot of them would no longer be classified as a diabetic at all. Unlike us type one's who were, most of us, diagnosed as a child and had to learn to endure several finger sticks and shots a day and that our bodies had to endure stress on our eyes, kidneys, heart, etc. before we had a chance fully physically and emotionally/mentally develop!
Thanks for listening - sorry for the LONG post...didn't mean to drag it on this long!
It is scary to me that the names confuse medical professionals. At nursing homes and care facilities of the like- often times only the word "diabetes" is written on their charts! My friend, RN, happened across this when a patient taking insulin a few times a day was also being given a med for "type 2." She said to him "I don't know why you are being given this pill, aren't you type 1?" He said "Yes, I'm type 1." Next day he was off the med.
I also heard a recent horror from the same place about type 1 patients going low. A patient had a 60 bg and was treated for the low and THEN NEVER RE-CHECKED! As I understand it type 2 with 60bg and treated won't keep going low, but type 1's can! This man died because they didn't re-check!
This is my biggest argument for a change in name. People die from this name confusion and that scares me. People are misunderstood because we don't ever stop having juvenile diabetes even when we are old.
Actually one idea that I have had is to start calling it Auto Immune Diabetes. (yes, that makes for odd initials, but the description fits)
The name says more about the cause rather then focusing on the symptoms. When explained listeners get more from that name then just saying Type1 Diabetes. They grasp the complexity a bit more (and that you don't have what grandpa has.) It becomes something invisible and scary because people have a basic grasp on how important the immune system is because of other auto immune diseases such as chrones disease or allergies.
When I explain that a part of my body is being attacked by my immune system, this gets stares but ones that I can handle because my diabetes is no longer about the way I look or what I eat, it is about a major PROBLEM. And that it is a major problem is what I want to express. I feel no embarrassment telling type 2s or other people that I will die in less 2 weeks if I don't have my insulin, because it is a fact, a terrifying one, that tells people that I am not type 2. I only save this for certain people or when collecting funds for the cure.... but hey, it helps clear thing up for those who want to know.
haha i love that commercial. My friends saw it and now they always say it when there around me. Its hilarious.it makes me think that if i wasmt diabetic i would never of thought that to be amusing!