Acceptance & Surrender - Longevity in insulin-dependent diabetes is easier to achieve with less fast-acting insulin
I wanted to write a quick post on here because I continue to observe, year after year, social media posts by Type 1 diabetics that really worry me. A big theme in the content is that they eat whatever they want. I even saw one Type 1 diabetic post a picture of them bringing a whole case of insulin pens to an Italian restaurant because Italian food has so many carbs(!) But look at all this insulin and all these needles! It takes me months to go through a Humalog pen, so I cannot even fathom going through one pen in one evening. That's a (I'll leave out the expletive) absolute ton of insulin to take with a meal, folks. I just looked in my refrigerator and there's 5 pens in a case. That would be completely suicidal for me. Mind you I had profound diabetic ketoacidosis when I was diagnosed in 2018, my head feeling like hammers were hitting it in continuous succession once they got the potassium up and started the insulin drip, with lights in my eyes checking for cerebral edema in the ICU... and an A1C of 12... so I'm coming in with the best of them. A few posts later on my scroll, this same content creator is taking a video of themselves on the floor, nearly comatose on death's door with a blood sugar in the 20's, chugging a fruit juice trying to get their blood sugar up with the small amount of strength they have left in them. The number it rises to will likely also not be ideal and they won't be feeling well for a long while. Insulin-dependent diabetes doesn't have to be like this. I write this because I care, truly care, actually, not because I judge. Not eating what others do can be frustrating. I constantly feel like an awkward invalid in social situations, particularly at restaurants or in a dining situation with people I've recently met. I won't deny it, even though there's truly no reason to feel less than. The explaining is just exhausting as everyone with Type 1 knows. Everyone is insanely curious about what happened, what you did, to acquire this illness. And it's just so tense saying thanks so much for asking, but actually I didn't do anything, it's autoimmune! while they continue to look at you skeptically, quizzically. It makes me laugh to write about the arrogance but it's very accurate, unfortunately. I'm sure I have many more of these conversations left. But many times I wished I could just dissolve and magically appear on my living room recliner, a cup of tea on the coaster and jazz playing on the TV. Far, far away from the nightmare dialogue.
Yet even in light of the societal challenges and possible peer pressure, it is undoubtedly certain that you cannot pretend that you have a functioning pancreas. It's just not going to work out well for you. It's like the scene in the Spielberg movie AI:Artificial Intelligence when David tries to be human like his brother Martin and eats spinach. Martin is provoking him, flaunting that he can eat food and David can't. David really wants to be human like everyone else in his family (except Teddy, the family's AI animal). David is programmed, like we are, to want to belong. As David grabs the spinach, Teddy warns him, "You will break." He eats it anyways. It becomes an emergency situation, but a technician is able to clean the spinach out of David. The tech tells him, "Spinach is for rabbits, people and Popeye, not robo-boys."
I've said this on here before, but nothing and no one is worth getting diabetic macular edema, neovascular glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy...we can just leave it there with a very select few eye complications alone! Potential blindness is enough motivation for me to stay on track. According to the American Diabetes Association, every 3 minutes and 30 seconds a limb is amputated due to diabetes. And that's if you make it past all the severe hypoglycemic episodes in the Adventures in Insulin that comes with eating whatever you want. I remember years ago I had pizza one time. Two slices. Blood sugar shot up so high, high 300's, the room was spinning and I couldn't get it down, then hours later all the insulin seemed to hit at once. Had to end the night with Baqsimi or what I like to call diabetic Narcan and a complete near death experience. A great deal of the ubiquitous food out there is no bueno for you. It's actually almost a blessing not to be able to eat it without a ton of shooting up. It's important to remember that every adult knows this food is bad for them, but they're addicted to it. It's also important to remember that a great deal of people eating these foods are un-diagnosed pre-diabetics, and that's not my opinion, you will need to take that up with the CDC. Their last report said 1 in 3 American adults have pre-diabetes. Could definitely be even worse now! As for the rate of full-blown diabetes, well check out the graphs on DiabetesAtlas.org, a site maintained by the International Diabetes Foundation (IDF). I'd say it's going up. And the money some companies are and will be making! How exciting for them. If you think the economy is making times tight now, add in a disease that requires a great deal of expensive supplies to maintain, has an absolute ton of additionally expensive medical comorbidities, and the possibility that the prices of those supplies, prescriptions or services could skyrocket at any time. The IDF states that the USA has the highest total diabetes-related health expenditure.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but based on my experience, if you eat a nutritious diet that allows you to take as little insulin as possible while achieving good numbers you have a much greater quality of life and chance of survival than those eating "whatever they want", also known as junk food. The blood sugar roller coaster ride from hell, trust me this ride is a horror show, can ruin every single day. The programs out that there that promise to have the perfect formula for you to achieve perfect numbers with no dietary limitations appear to be a complete scam to me. Unless you want to roll the dice on your life every day. Because every day is different. Type 1 diabetes is ironically like a box of chocolates, you truly never know what you're going to get. I have days where I eat boiled eggs, steamed tofu, broccoli, an extremely healthy salad and still have a 175 blood sugar. Sometimes I need no insulin at all. That's part of being the most severe you can get on the diabetes scale. Thank you, Lord! But I will take small amounts of insulin to get it down if needed. 3 units at a time at most. What I've learned most over the years is patience. And my risk of dying has greatly, greatly reduced. Don't bring a whole box of insulin to an Italian restaurant! You just can't predict how that will go. To me it's like watching someone free solo climbing on the side of a massive mountain. That's a real thing, and a lot of them fall to their death. It's like people who climb Everest hallucinating in the extremely low-oxygen "death zone" or passing away in the attempt, leaving a small child father-less and wife to pick up the pieces. Those are just two recent stories I read about people climbing Everest. I wonder sometimes if these people have Toxoplasmosis. It's largely hidden in the general population and has been found to substantially enhance risk-taking impulses.
The IDF's 2025 report says: "Diabetes is a major health issue that has reached alarming levels...diabetes is one of the fastest-growing global health emergencies of the 21st century." When I write on here, I sometimes feel like Chris Farley when he played Matt Foley the motivational speaker on SNL. "Now let's get started by letting me give you a little bit of a scenario of what my life is all about." It's not ideal and involves living in a van down by the river. Not the exact same scenario for me, but equally intense. I read recently "never waste your suffering" and I am trying not to.
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