After my interview with Rick Phillips for TuDiabetes Tuesday, I took some time to reflect on what we discussed. There were a lot of acronyms in there: CGM, DSMA, and a couple of others I can’t remember right now.
You can probably relate to this when I tell you: Before I found the Diabetes Online Community, I had absolutely no idea what those things meant. Or even that they existed.
Those of us that have been communicating about diabetes for some time, even people like me with just a high school education and a few years’ experience writing about diabetes, tend to shorten our words an awful lot sometimes. On one hand, that’s just the nature of communication these days. Why write out “been there, done that” on your phone when you can just tap out “BTDT”?
On the other: If you’re new, and all this is new to you, it can be a bit overwhelming at first. I wonder sometimes if we lose people with our thorough knowledge and discussion of the A1cs and BGs. I don’t think so, at least not all the time. But sometimes I worry that while I’m trying to make a point about IOB, or CDEs very quickly, I make it so quick that it’s easy to lose someone on the outside of the conversation, knowledge-wise. I don’t ever want to do that.
So if you ever see something I write, or hear something I say, and it doesn’t make sense to you, I hope you’ll ask me for an explanation. You deserve that.
And if you don’t want to ask me for an explanation, guess what? TuDiabetes is an amazing source of information. They even have this Diabetes Terminology Glossary that explains just about everything you’ll ever want to know about the acronyms that power our diabetes discussions.
I admit it: I’m a diabetes acronym-dropper. But don’t let it rattle you. And in the words of Bennet Dunlap, LYMI.
CGM: Continuous Glucose Monitor
DSMA: Diabetes Social Media Advocay (the #DSMA Twitter chat is every Wednesday at 9:00 ET)
DOC: Diabetes Online Community
A1c: According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), “The A1C test is sometimes called the hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c, or glycohemoglobin test. The A1C test is the primary test used for diabetes management and diabetes research.”
BG: Blood Glucose
IOB: Insulin On Board (the insulin still active in the body at any given time)
CDE: Certified Diabetes Educator
LYMI: Love Ya, Mean It.
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Comments
Great point about all the acronyms. I find I use them a lot on my blog. But when I write guest posts for other sites, I try to write the word out at least once, sometimes with the acronym in parenthesis, before using the shortcuts. However, I’m now thinking I should probably do that same on my blog. Thanks for always giving me something to consider.
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Stephen when you toss in the RA acronyms I sound like I am from the planet completely incomprehensible. When I add in my poor spelling and typing, well you get the idea.
Of course, this is not the first time this has happened. After all, for 17 years I worked in a local city hall mostly overseeing federal programs. Have you seen my HAP, with the CDBG, which was prepared based on my OEDP from the EDA? Yeah, I got your acronyms. LOL
rick
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Well – back before I began using insulin – and back when I first started reading d-blogs… I had to look up basal and bolus – You’re right. We need to not assume that people know what we’re talking about.
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