What I've Learned

By Scott Coulter It's the end of the year, and instead of making a list of resolutions for what I'll do differently next year (which never works, by the way), I thought I'd take the time to write down everything I've learned from the past 20 years of living with Type 1 diabetes. Yep, that's right, it's my 20-year anniversary with this sucker, and so I thought I'd wrap up this milestone year with a recap of everything I've learned so far. Lesson #1: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need. Mick Jagger was right. Diabetes is certainly not something that fits in the "want" category. Nobody would "want" to have diabetes. But more often than not, it has fit into the "need" category. Let me explain. You see, diabetes has been a pretty profound teacher for me. It's taught me about balance, it's taught me how to pay attention to my physical body, and it's given me a pretty ingrained understanding of how to manage complex systems. And at the end of the day, learning how to live well with this disease has made me into a better person. Lesson #2: Kicking, screaming, yelling, ranting, resenting, etc. does very little good. I've spent my share of time kicking the wall, yelling, fuming, getting mad, and beating myself up for bad numbers. I've gotten plenty frustrated when my blood glucose goes into a "wonky" spell and misbehaves on me. And I've spent some time resenting the burden of having diabetes. But after 20 years, I ca...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs