Live With Diabetes – My Experiences

Welcome to my site.  I created this site as a way to both to share my own experiences and also as a way of learning how to better live with my own Diabetes so I can share these experiences of others.

Anyone who has Diabetes already knows that learning to live with it can be a real pain but it is also manageable if you work at it.

Live With Diabetes

First I’ll give you a little history on my experiences with Diabetes.

I was first diagnosed with Diabetes about 8 years ago.  It was around that same time I was also diagnosed with Pancreatitis.  Which came first I’m not sure but I do know that they feed off each other.

Both Pancreatitis and Diabetes are diseases that involve your Pancreas.

Pancreatitis can be caused by a number of different things including alcoholism, physical damage to the Pancreas, as a side effect of certain types of drugs, or even by a bite from a scorpion.

But mine, like many others was idiopathic – meaning that it was of unknown origin.

Pancreatitis can occur either as a chronic ongoing condition or as a single acute attack.  It can damage the Pancreas and this makes it harder for the Pancreas to do the work that it is designed to do – which in part is to regulate your blood sugar.

Because of this I suspect that I gradually developed Pancreatitis and that caused me to become Diabetic with type 2 Diabetes.

The Pancreas itself has two main functions.  First it creates the insulin that helps to regulate the blood sugars in your blood.  Then it also makes the enzymes that help to digest the foods that you eat.

If you’ve developed Diabetes because of Pancreatitis you can check out another site that I have about that subject at pancreatitisfacts.com.

Types of Diabetes

There are several types of disease that fall under the general heading of Diabetes.

Type 2 Diabetes : a chronic condition that affects to a varying degree how the body processes blood sugar.

Type 1 Diabetes : This is a chronic condition where the Pancreas produces little or no insulin.

Prediabetes : This is when you are having high blood sugars but still not high or consistent enough to be considered a Type 2 diabetic.

Gestational Diabetes :  This form of Diabetes is a form of high blood sugars that affect pregnant women

Blood Sugar Levels

Since I’ve developed Type 2 Diabetes I’ve had a tough time with maintaining my blood sugar levels in the range that my Doctor would like to see them.

This is even when you take into consideration the fact that most of the time I have high blood sugar numbers because of the chronic inflammation from the Pancreatitis.

Right now, to control those numbers,  I take  insulin twice a day and with meals  to help regulate those blood sugars but I’ve found that isn’t always enough.

Recently my partner and I started to take walks a couple of times a day and I found that this exercise can help to lower blood sugar numbers.

The difference that this small amount of exercise made in my blood sugars is amazing.  They have finally started to stabilize in the area closer to those that my Doctor is looking for me to be at.

Testing Blood Sugars

One of the hardest parts of learning to live with Diabetes is becoming used to the constant stick of the lancets required for my blood sugar testing.

This became even worse when I had to start take insulin through multiple daily injections.

When I first became diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes the thought of just jabbing myself with those lancets to test my blood sugar level was bad enough.

But when I had to start giving myself insulin it became even worse to deal with but it was something that I needed to learn to do each day.

Rolling Blood Vessels

One problem that I have had over the years whenever I needed a blood test or an IV was rolling veins.  Whenever a blood test is needed to check my A1C levels I still cringe.

This was caused a very bad experience as a child when a nurse kept jabbing me trying to get a blood sample.  Now I know if someone is needing to draw blood or insert an IV that I need to warn them.

But as a child I didn’t know this and that idiot nurse kept jabbing and jabbing me until I had more than 8 punctures in each arm.  This left me with an intense fear of needles.

Gradually – over time – with the Pancreatitis and Diabetes I have gotten over the worst of that trauma but needles still bother me.

But bottom line – If you want to control your blood sugar you need to test the sugars several times a day and possibly give yourself Insulin.

Future Of Diabetes

I’ve recently read about trials that will allow us to test our blood sugar with a light through our fingernails but that is still in development and may not be commercially available for some time.

Right now an app and device are being advertised that does constant testing of your blood sugar level.

Other trials are under way that may eventually allow us to use insulin that can deal with your blood sugars for a week or more at a time.  I’ve tried one of these and it instantly caused a Pancreatitis flare up.

All these are future things that could happen but for the time being we have to deal with current medicines and test methods.  It always takes time for new things to get approved by insurance companies.

Diabetes Diet

Another tough part of learning to live with Diabetes was learning to change my diet.  I’ve always had a terrible sweet tooth and that made any kind of  dieting a problem.

I also love sodas and used to drink several a day.  So dieting is not something I ever wanted.

But in addition to getting older and my activity level slowing the Diabetes made this a priority.