Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

I’m a fan of words. Their spellings, their meanings. Learning to live with diabetes is like learning an entirely new language.

Here’s what I mean by that, using 8 examples:
 
 
1. Diabetus
I always hated when people said “diabetus” instead of “diabetes”. It’s the last two syllables… “beat us”. I don’t like the idea of living with a chronic condition that has that kind of language in its very name.

2. Medical Devices
There are more medical devices helping us to succeed with diabetes than ever before. Some people name their Dexcom Dex, or their pump some other name. If you’re someone using an Omnipod, do you call yourself a Podder? Are you Podding? I can tell you that I am definitely not Vibeing…

3. Co-morbidities
I don’t know about you, but I don’t even want one morbidity, let alone two or more. I might settle for 1/2 a morbidity, but that’s all. No more. I can only accept so much. I wonder if this is that bargaining part of bargaining, denial anger, depression, and acceptance we hear about?

4. Target range
To be honest, it would be a lot easier to hit the target if the target didn’t move constantly throughout the day. That’s the way it is with diabetes, every day. This is a term I’d love to find a replacement for.

5. Basal
When I wanted to begin on an insulin pump, I must admit that I didn’t even know what a basal or a bolus was. No endocrinologist I ever saw up to that point described dosing insulin in this way. Once my current endo educated me, I had trouble for a week or two remembering which was the basal and which was the bolus. So I tried to think of basal as the herb… you know, basil. I imagined an herb leaf every time I logged in what my basal rate was for the day. Don’t knock it… it worked.

6. Bolus
I don’t really have much to say about bolusing, except that I get ticked off every time autocorrect changes it to “blousing”.

7. Advocacy
Like many people, I used to think that advocacy was too big and too difficult for someone like me. The truth is that advocacy is easier than you think, it can take place in many forms, and it usually has a positive effect on both the subject and the practitioner of said advocacy. So let your advocacy loose… you’ve got a lot to give.

8. Lancet
Another word I don’t like. Probably because it has elements of onomatopoeia to it. In other words, the word itself sounds too much like what it does, which is lance the skin to get blood for a glucose test. I wouldn’t mind the onomatopoeiac nature of it so much if it were something a little nicer.
 
 
And there you have it… eight diabetes words, and eight ways of looking at them. I hope your weekend is fabulous. Talk to you next week!