The Expert

Jaded. Cynical. When did I turn into that?
I tend to view doctors as diabetically ignorant, until proven otherwise. I am the expert on 95% of issues pertaining to my diabetes, after all, I've lived with it longer then some of them have been practicing medicine. I don't know it all- but like anything else, the same issue will pop up again + you just run through the trouble shooting list until one of the options works. Sometimes I wonder why I even go to the endo- it's not because I don't know everything she'll say. I think it's more for the support (that I'll feel like doing everything she says). She gets it, and I appreciate that.

So many people take a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to their diabetes - never check, attempt no self-management whatsoever. And doctors/healthcare professionals slap them with a "noncompliant" label + feel obligated to try and manage their disease for them.

I'd lived with diabetes for a month, when I had my first low blood sugar. It was a bad one, dropping 50 more points in the space of 10 minutes. And my parents, panicking, used the glucagon kit. Afterwords- they called the doctor.Asked how it could have dropped that fast. And there were no answers, its just the nature of the disease.

I guess then is when I discovered no one knows how to manage diabetes. Not doctors, not nurses, not CDE's. And if I did everything "by the textbook", I'd be seriously screwed up or dead by now.
Case in point- treatment of low blood sugar.
50-70 mg/dl- Responds within 20 minutes to 30 grams juice.
Anything lower then 50- Needs glucose gel, plus the juice.
Under 30- Passed out. Or about to.
If you're an adult and mentally competant- you can't depend on anyone to try and completely manage your disease for you. You've got to be ever vigilant. Support is a wonderful(and necessary) thing, but its still mainly the PWD's responsibility.

That's how I turned into that. (What you don't know- will kill you) So even if you don't have two initals behind your name- remember, you live with it- and that makes you more of an expert then they'll ever be)