Honestly
I’m still wavering on whether I should bother putting up my numbers from my last Lantus pen. I know it’s not that big of a deal. I already have them written down so the issue of accountability isn’t really a valid argument for or against. However I do like the idea of the kind of permanence the Internet offers. Putting them here has that extra umph to it. Maybe that’s just me. But while I continue to wrestle with this rather mundane decision there is something else that has been bothering me lately. I have not been honest with you.
OK, that is a bit of a stretch. To clarify, I have not been completely honest with you. There are times when I will check my blood sugar, feel embarrassed by what Bart Allen displays and will either not post a #bgnow or simply lie about it. I know that nobody is perfect and your Diabetes may vary and blah bliddy bloo blah. I still feel ashamed when I see numbers dramatically out of range, be it too high or too low. I’m not out here to impress anyone. I don’t see myself as an inspiration or anything. I don’t see myself as a role model. As you can see, my actions are nothing to write home about.
I know I can’t let the sight of a single number dictate my mental state until the next state but that’s where I am right now. I diligently check my blood sugar like a “good Diabetic” but while I continue to aim for this impossible-to-hit moving target, this is something I still have trouble sharing. Even with complete strangers.
Disclosure is not one of my finer points. It never has been.
And if I can’t be honest with the inherent anonymity of the Internet, how can I be honest with myself?
Stop Diabetes
I say work on being honest with yourself First.
Don’t worry about sharing with anyone, ever. This is about You and you only.
If you decide to share, great. If not, so what.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s a process to learn to take one number at a time and not let it bother you one way or the other.
All in all, I say you’re doing great. You are taking care of yourself, you are aware, you do what needs to be done. In the grand scheme of it, That is what matters.
I don’t like disclosing my numbers (of any kind: A1C, blood sugar, weight, IQ, number of candy bars I’ve eaten this morning, etc etc), and I absolutely know what you mean about wanting to hide from some of them.
Thing is, what you’re seeing is exactly what we’re all seeing, on one day or another. Sharing your numbers isn’t required for being part of this community, either. You don’t need to post your results. You can just say “I am wicked high,” or “Holy crap. another low?” or “Hey, that’s a solid number. Awesome.” You don’t need to disclose anything you don’t feel comfortable disclosing. It’s your blog, my friend. Your diabetes.
Basically, what you share is your business. Don’t feel pressured to give any more information than you feel comfortable giving.
Or you could post your numbers in code. Make us go all cryptex on your (car horn sound).
Either way, we’ve got your back.
I am (now significantly less) ashamed to say i do the same thing with tweeting my numbers. (I’m dorklet79). Once I admitted to myself that I was flat out lying, I just stopped posting bgnow’s.
I also feel the same way about my number dictating how I feel for awhile. Its really isn’t just a number – its a judgment on how well you’ve lived your d-life for the previous 2-4 hours. You just have to let that judgment be okay and be a learning experience. I struggle with it All. The. Time. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years now.
thanks for letting me unburden myself!!
…so as I was saying, yanno how I post a reading at the top of each post? Sometimes, if it’s high, I’ll take some insulin, like I would anyway, but I’ll wait until I get a lower reading to post it. It might still be a crappy number, but at least it will be a less crappy number. And sometimes, if I have a good reading, but it takes me longer to finish the post, instead of checking again to get a more up-to-date number, I’ll just post the number I had an hour or two ago because I’m pretty sure it’s better than the number I might get right at that moment. Not always… but sometimes.
And sometimes I just say, eff it, and post the 300-something because I already feel defeated by D so what can anyone else say or do or think to make me feel worse?
Chris-
I listened to the podcast with you and Kerri! I am proud of you for taking this HUGE step. We all would like to see the “perfect” or “in range” number but it doesn’t happen all the time. I promise you sometimes I over analyze my numbers but I’m learning to do better. Keep doing what you do…baby steps:)
Guilt is the hardest part of Diabetes and I blame it for my ten years of disease denial. I stopped checking my BG’s in order to avoid that guilty feeling. Just remember we’re all going through the same thing. All you can do is all you can do. Cliche, but that’s the way it is. You can only do so much, and when you’re fed up, you’ll do more. Like when MDI pens and testing 15 times a day and exercise and eating right still didn’t change the numbers of my A1c and I decided that it was (finally) time to try out a pump and CGMS. Maybe it’s something different for you. Who knows. Diabetes is a series of epiphanies and let downs. All we can do is all we can do. I can’t say it enough. Just remember, you ARE good enough, you CAN live with this disease, and people ARE here for you when you feel like you can’t.
Here for you, d-brother.
Been thinking about this post since I read it yesterday morning. Good post, good step toward disclosure. I don’t always post my numbers when they are the suck, but when I do, my rationale is as follows:
Everyone has Not Perfect Numbers (we’ll call them NPN), thus I have NPN.
When I see other people’s NPN, I feel like my Not Perfectness is not something I should get so angry about.
So if posting my NPN helps other people realize that it’s the course of things, it’s human, and it’s not worth the frustration that usually follows, then it’s worth it. And I’ll just tune out the people who lecture me about better control.
So that’s how I feel about NPN being posted.
At the same time, as as much as I’d like to NOT be possessive of the disease, Kerri makes a great point. It’s yours and it’s about you. We’ll celebrate the Holy-Crap-That’s-A-Good-Number (HCTAGN?) with you anyway. So don’t stress. Just be gentle with yourself.
Sidenote: every time I look at this post, even though it’s titled “HonestLy” rather than “Honesty” Billy Joel’s whiniest song ever starts going through my head. Grrrumble, grumble.