You leave the doctor’s office with a fistful of colorful pamphlets and a pounding heart. Never in a million years did you think you’d be hearing those words. One of the most unexpected, unthinkable things has happened to you: you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic, incurable disease. Diabetes.
Now what?
Well, as Cathy Paessun of the Central Ohio Diabetes Association says, “Diabetes is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
Now What: Management
According to Paessun, approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population has either pre-diabetes or diabetes proper, but only 20 percent of those people have been diagnosed. That means 10 percent of those who have diabetes in the U.S. are completely unaware of it.
So how does this happen?
Well, partially, the myths surrounding diabetes are tough to break through. For example, you may have heard that type 1 diabetes is “Childhood Diabetes,” or that your overweight Uncle Jim who only eats the skin off of egg rolls “gave himself” Type 2 Diabetes.
Neither of these things is true.
Type 1 diabetes is often diagnosed in adults, and you cannot “give yourself” diabetes. Diet and exercise play a critical role in prevention and management, but the same could be said of any other chronic illness – from cancer to anxiety to everything in between.
But that isn’t to say it’s easy to just up and change your diet, remember to take your medication, and drastically alter your lifestyle. You don’t get a day off from a chronic illness, after all. It’s a constant battle with yourself to do that much more to get healthy, to break just one more bad habit, to get that much more sleep.
Sounds exhausting, right?
Now What: Call in Your Cavalry
Tasks difficult to do by oneself:
- Wallpaper the living room
- Take a road trip
- Clean the house
- Manage your chronic illness
So don’t.
Surround yourself with love and support, and you’ll find that all of those things above —especially illness - to be a lot easier. It’s like going to the gym; everyone does better with a buddy.
And if you don’t know how to support your loved ones, just be that buddy. Your spouse just got diagnosed with diabetes? Join him or her in changing your diets together. Your best friend was diagnosed the other day? Why not have some sugar-free coffee creamer in your fridge, so that you can both continue your Saturday morning coffee routine?
And if you can’t build your own supportive community, get involved with one. The Central Ohio Diabetes Association prides itself on being the support network for those who have both been diagnosed later in life and who live with it their whole lives. They have a social worker on staff, as well as a certified diabetes educator to help with nutrition and wellness. And, as Paessun says, “We’re only a phone call away.”
Now What: Prevention
The easiest way not to incur a chronic illness is to lower your exposure to its risks. It’s not a hard and fast rule – nothing ever is – but there are certainly things you can do to help:
No. 1: Get a yearly physical.
Yes, we know, people avoid them because of the redundancy:: you need to eat better, and lose weight, and go to the gym once in a while. But staying on top of your health is critical.
You only get one body, after all.
No. 2: Eat right, and exercise often.
See above.
No. 3: Find other people to help you.
Call in your cavalry. It cannot be stressed enough that this isn’t a venture you have to take on your own. As Paessun says, “Pay the help you receive forward.” You never know whose life you might be changing.
Now What: Future
Just like how everything in an electronics catalogue from the ’90s is now contained in your smartphone, medical technology, too, marches ever onwards.
It used to be that keeping track of a diabetic diet was like calorie counting on steroids, and that diabetics were constantly injecting themselves with insulin that originally wasn’t even human. The insulin pump was a welcome improvement with its superior interface, and even easier still is the continuous glucose monitoring of the modern artificial pancreas. The end goal is to synthesize the organ entirely and remove all the wearable technology from the equation. Gene therapy is also being looked at as a possible solution, although the technology to bring it commercial is still years away.
And plenty of organizations are on the lookout for improvements in diabetes care and management. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Association, for example, noticed that people were engineering their own individual continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps to work together as an automated system, so they “launched an initiative to make these user-driven, DIY technology approaches more accessible to a wider group of people with diabetes,” even if it isn’t technically FDA approved yet.
The Take Away
Diabetes will definitely change your life, but with improvements in technology and a robust support system, self-management is doable.
Maddi Rasor is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
