a brief diatribe
so i had a doctor's appointment this morning. i cannot stand doctors. probably partially b/c i figure i can just call my parents when i need a diagnosis. but mostly i consider doctors a necessary step in my getting drugs and referrals to other doctors, so i go into their office and just tell them what i need and then want that to be it.
see, i have been diabetic since i was 2, and i didn't do anything about it until i was about 24. prior to that i would just go and tell them that i didn't know anything at all about my diabetes and then they would invariably make me cry by telling me i would die an early death. but now i am on a pump and i check my bloodsugar all the time and am actually under really great control.
not that there is much of a method to my madness. it's not like eat 3 square meals a day or check my bloodsugar at some sort of regular intervals. or keep any sort of record of my numbers. that's the main thing they lecture me on these days. but here is the thing: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING WITH MY NUMBERS!
what are you going to do? see that after i ate a hot dog on august 14, my bloodsugar was a bit high 2 hours later? so you're going to tell me that the amount of insulin i took for that hot dog was not enough? well what the hell good is that going to do? besides, how would you even know that was true? maybe i was more sedentary than usual the previous day. or maybe i also had a bite of a snickers that i forgot to account for. YOU HAVE NO IDEA! and even if you did, is that really going to matter at all for my care? no! no it is not! and when you consider that between doctor's appointments, even if i went every 6 months, that i would have checked my bloodsugar approximately 1500 times. and that you can't really figure out the relevance of those numbers and the effect of my insulin use on them if you don't know EVERY single thing i consumed. and every shot i took. and the sort of patterns that you may be able to distinguish, like if i always wake up high in the morning, are the things that i do notice b/c I AM DOING THIS ALL THE TIME! plus, it's not like i always wake up high. some mornings high, some low, some a perfect 100. but if i did need to change my basal, I KNOW THAT! AND I KNOW HOW TO DO IT! I AM NOT A MORON!
i firmly believe, as i pretty much always have, that the only person who can be responsible for my care, or at all informed about it, is me. once again, perhaps this would be different if i ate 3 regularly scheduled meals of x number of carbohydrates per day, but do you people know me? what the hell chance do you think there is of that ever happening? i eat when i am hungry. i skip meals when i am not hungry. i eat what i feel like eating. at that exact moment. sometimes i eat because i am bored, or b/c i was walking by a table in the law school and there was cake sitting on it. no, this is not ideal, but you will NEVER be able to get me to do otherwise. and my insulin-taking isn't really much better. sometimes i just give myself insulin b/c i think that i should. because of something i ate an hour ago, or because of how i feel, or for no good reason at all sometimes.
but ever since i went on the pump, my glycosylated hemoglobin has been around 6.0. which is pretty close to that of non-diabetics and as good as you can be if you are a diabetic. they used to say you're doing well if you are under 10.0. it looks pretty clear to me that I AM DOING A DAMNED GOOD JOB OF THIS! so get off my back, stupid doctors who think you are going to teach me something! i have already been taught the same things that you know and are going to tell me. i am using those things on a daily basis. i have access to me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. you are not going to meet with me for 20 minutes every 6 months and do a better job of this than i am.
anyways, i get really upset every time i go. and the best part is that they scheduled me to see the endocrinologist on monday. i ALWAYS cry at endocrinologists. last time there was a really adorable med student and i blubbered for an hour. maybe this time i will yell. maybe this time i will take a print-out of this diatribe. which wound up being more lenghty than brief. now i just have to cross my fingers that my A1C is still around 6 and is not so high that they think they have to teach me something. i have a lot more credibility when it is perfect. tho even with an A1C of 8.0, i don't think they could really do anything.
GRRRRRRR. i have gotten all worked up about this all over again. sorry. i just wanted to vent.
see, i have been diabetic since i was 2, and i didn't do anything about it until i was about 24. prior to that i would just go and tell them that i didn't know anything at all about my diabetes and then they would invariably make me cry by telling me i would die an early death. but now i am on a pump and i check my bloodsugar all the time and am actually under really great control.
not that there is much of a method to my madness. it's not like eat 3 square meals a day or check my bloodsugar at some sort of regular intervals. or keep any sort of record of my numbers. that's the main thing they lecture me on these days. but here is the thing: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING WITH MY NUMBERS!
what are you going to do? see that after i ate a hot dog on august 14, my bloodsugar was a bit high 2 hours later? so you're going to tell me that the amount of insulin i took for that hot dog was not enough? well what the hell good is that going to do? besides, how would you even know that was true? maybe i was more sedentary than usual the previous day. or maybe i also had a bite of a snickers that i forgot to account for. YOU HAVE NO IDEA! and even if you did, is that really going to matter at all for my care? no! no it is not! and when you consider that between doctor's appointments, even if i went every 6 months, that i would have checked my bloodsugar approximately 1500 times. and that you can't really figure out the relevance of those numbers and the effect of my insulin use on them if you don't know EVERY single thing i consumed. and every shot i took. and the sort of patterns that you may be able to distinguish, like if i always wake up high in the morning, are the things that i do notice b/c I AM DOING THIS ALL THE TIME! plus, it's not like i always wake up high. some mornings high, some low, some a perfect 100. but if i did need to change my basal, I KNOW THAT! AND I KNOW HOW TO DO IT! I AM NOT A MORON!
i firmly believe, as i pretty much always have, that the only person who can be responsible for my care, or at all informed about it, is me. once again, perhaps this would be different if i ate 3 regularly scheduled meals of x number of carbohydrates per day, but do you people know me? what the hell chance do you think there is of that ever happening? i eat when i am hungry. i skip meals when i am not hungry. i eat what i feel like eating. at that exact moment. sometimes i eat because i am bored, or b/c i was walking by a table in the law school and there was cake sitting on it. no, this is not ideal, but you will NEVER be able to get me to do otherwise. and my insulin-taking isn't really much better. sometimes i just give myself insulin b/c i think that i should. because of something i ate an hour ago, or because of how i feel, or for no good reason at all sometimes.
but ever since i went on the pump, my glycosylated hemoglobin has been around 6.0. which is pretty close to that of non-diabetics and as good as you can be if you are a diabetic. they used to say you're doing well if you are under 10.0. it looks pretty clear to me that I AM DOING A DAMNED GOOD JOB OF THIS! so get off my back, stupid doctors who think you are going to teach me something! i have already been taught the same things that you know and are going to tell me. i am using those things on a daily basis. i have access to me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. you are not going to meet with me for 20 minutes every 6 months and do a better job of this than i am.
anyways, i get really upset every time i go. and the best part is that they scheduled me to see the endocrinologist on monday. i ALWAYS cry at endocrinologists. last time there was a really adorable med student and i blubbered for an hour. maybe this time i will yell. maybe this time i will take a print-out of this diatribe. which wound up being more lenghty than brief. now i just have to cross my fingers that my A1C is still around 6 and is not so high that they think they have to teach me something. i have a lot more credibility when it is perfect. tho even with an A1C of 8.0, i don't think they could really do anything.
GRRRRRRR. i have gotten all worked up about this all over again. sorry. i just wanted to vent.
posted by laura at 12:12 PM
1 Comments:
I can't stand them either (except for my dad, of course). My old doctor in Boston was always in a snit about my cholesterol. Ok, it's high, yes. But I explained, it's genetic, I cannot diet too much because then I will be too thin, at the time I did exercise (even though that has gone by the wayside) to keep my thick old blood pumping through the system, there wasn't much else I could do. I talked to my dad, and he said with my levels of cholesterol and what I do for it, I was fine. He said I'd have to take cholesterol reducing medicines once I hit menopause, but that is a long time from now. But my doctor was not satisfied, she would demand I go on them now, so I told her to give me a study on the long-term (like 40-50 years, since that's about how long I'd be on them) effects of choloesterol reducers and she said there wasn't one, and I said I'm not going on a medication for the next 40 years that hasn't been tested for 40 years. And my dad agreed, and my doctor nagged me every time.
Now, I just don't let them do cholesterol tests. My dad said I should start aspirin therapy to thin my blood, but I always forget to take them, oh well. But it's not like my doctor ever suggested that as a compromise. Ugh, she pissed me off.
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