My D-word

In addition to the usual profanity (which I do not use), there are other words that I have a really hard time using. For a long time “fat” was my other f-word. It was just so much something I could not bear to vocalize. It was always there, certainly, but it hurt too much, and I would call myself “ugly” instead, even though it was less accurate. Maybe that’s why I preferred “ugly”—because it was not really true. “Fat” was true, and it felt like it made anything else that might be positive about me not matter.

Eventually I passed this point where I realized that the word had way too much power over me, and it wasn’t fooling anyone. It’s not like anyone was thinking of me as skinny until someone said the word. “Oh, now I see it! How did I miss that?”

However, there are things that people can’t tell just by looking, and so you can still keep secret, though doing so may not be in your best interests. For me, one of those things has been being diabetic.

I’m not saying nobody knows, but it’s amazing how many conversations I have had with other people on the topic without identifying. I remember once being in a meeting and one person was mentioned, and someone was referring to one girl, kind of impressed, with how hard she had it because she had to inject herself four times a day. I thought to myself, “Lightweight. I inject six times”, but I didn’t say anything.

(I’m sure in her case she was taking long-acting insulin once a day, and fast-acting insulin with meals. I do that, but I am also injecting Byetta twice a day, which helps counter the weight gain associated with taking insulin, to the amount of about 15-20 pounds in my case, if I am taking insulin without Byetta.)

I have had diabetes for about twelve years now, and certainly part of my not wanting to talk about it is because it is nobody’s business but my own, and I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do or judging everything I eat. There is an old-school belief that you cannot have table sugar with diabetes, when in reality, it is more about the carbs. A lot of the sugar-free stuff is not good for you, though the white sugar isn’t exactly good for you. I do a reasonably good job of controlling and measuring, with occasional lapses, but I do not need other people looking and judging. Of course, since one of my convictions is that I should not be worrying about what other people think, only what is right, that could be one argument against this reason for concealment.

The other thing though, and this was bigger, is that I was really ashamed of being diabetic. It was just more thing that I associated with being fat, which was everything bad about me, and now I had ruined my health in one other way, and I was bad. That was so ground into me, but I have had to reexamine it lately.

For one thing, everything else with my health is really good. My cholesterol’s great, as is my blood pressure and pulse and all of that. I was relieved by these things, but not particularly impressed by them, until recently when I was visiting with my endocrinologist and she asked if I had ever considered surgery. Well, of course, but I was reluctant about it, if for no other reason than that it felt like cheating. What she said though, was that I was in really good health, except for that, and that in a lot of cases the surgery changed the body chemistry, so that even before the weight loss happened the patients were able to stop taking insulin.

It was a perspective shift in two ways. First of all, I had never really thought about it being different that my other scores were good, but apparently having the obesity and diabetes thing going on tends to bring a lot of other side effects. Also, is my body chemistry messed up in some weird way that I don’t even understand? After all, I am the only person in my family with diabetes, but I am not the only obese one, or even the most obese one.

So because I like the routine that I am in now, and I believe it is getting some results, and because I still think it is better not to get surgery than to get surgery, I am not doing anything now, but I am giving myself a year, and if being consistent with sleep and exercise and nutrition really is not enough for me, then I’m going to do it.

Also, I at some point I need to get over this concept that I am bad, and that everything goes wrong for me is my fault. I should know better. I did write about this once, but they tried a medication on me once, Actos, that I had a really bad reaction to, in that it gave me lymph edema. I put on forty pounds in water, and I saw that my weight was going up quickly, and could not figure out what I was doing wrong, but obviously I was doing something wrong. The only reason I figured it out was that I got a scratch on my leg and I was bleeding clear, and that’s when I started to realize something was up. In that case, my attitude was dangerous, and I am really lucky that I got the scratch.

The problem is, even when you realize false thinking, it doesn’t automatically lead to having the right mindset and understanding of how it works. Getting there takes something else. I’m not giving up though, and even the bad stuff has its benefits. More on that tomorrow.