Facebook is an interesting animal.
Especially when you join any sort of health related "group." The larger diabetes related ones, bleed despair and rotten infected dropping off toes and and people who cannot afford their supplies and people for whom the wall of ignorance will never be penetrated.
"help, my blood sugar is HI what do I do"
"help, my leg is streaking red what do I do"
"how do I get my blood sugar down without going to the doctor"
"GMO's are bad, diet coke is bad, sugar is bad,yadayadayada"
When you look at these posts, its very obvious that the biggest problem in America is not diabetes...its the ignorance that millions live with. I am not a perfect PWD...that doesn't exist but how very lonely and isolating must it be to A. not be given the BASICS and the RESOURCES that you need or B.not be involved at all in your care, preferring to "let the doctors handle it" when diabetes is a disease that demands involvement? The beauty of the internet is that it lets patients become more empowered/connected, but the danger of the internet is that comes with just as many opinions on what you should do.(and many people would rather take their neighbor's advice then their doctor's advice)
People need (accurate) basics. People need support. People need a scare-free zone, a place where there are no pictures to make you lose your lunch. People need to take ownership of their own disease, and realize that no doctor can tell you how to get it perfect-perfect doesn't exist. (I also think that some basic diabetes knowledge "files"(from reputable websites)on FB could steer people in the right direction,right off the bat)
In short, people don't need most of the FB groups out there.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Health Plan Edition
In January,we must have a new health insurance plan. (We received the "Dear Policy Holder" letter yesterday.) This came as no surprise to me,because this particular plan was too good to be true without me personally causing it to go bankrupt. This plan(Coventry) no longer covers Federal Employees,of which my husband is one. Having hit my deductible in March(thanks to that pericarditis infection),the vast majority of the year has been copay and deductible free except for sensors which I still pay 20% on) Add on weekly magnesium infusions at 1K a pop (x6 months)and yeah,that gets really expensive. I'm happy to report that said frequency of magnesium infusions is decreasing..and I think by the New Year I'll be able to maintain adequate levels without infusions. This makes me very,very happy because even temporarily, barring extreme gastric distress, I have a oral replacement regimen that is doing the job. I also seem to have more prominent veins these days as well. Anyway,getting off infusions completely is really in our best interests because our next health insurance plan will not be covering them 100% like this one has.(two plans ago, I had a $250 copay for each infusion. That was not fun,even on a monthly basis.) I am fortunate to have health insurance options, but trying to find one that covers diabetes crap plus infusion crap plus
lower cost general stuff makes my non-mathamatician brain explode. (Blue Cross was horrible,Carefirst was decent,
Coventry has been very lovely and I'm very sad to see it go.) May end up going back to Carefirst but I have the next 1.5 months to peruse the choices and weigh the pros/cons of each. Every year all the plans make changes and hike up the premiums.(to boot) And then you spend the first part of the year discovering the places you get supplies/meds from are no longer in network and GRRRR new RX's and whatnot have to be written and faxed and sent via Pony Express to the far corners of the U.S. (That's life in the USA)
To semi-prepare for this,I try to stock up on stuff as much as humanly possible.(RX fills strictly as often as possible to Jan.,which gives me some bumper room that I don't have to get the new stuff straightaway) Probably chiropractic will no longer be covered either,which is why I hope I'm 95-100% straightened out by then. Choosing a new plan is so stressful.(kind of like the health equivalent of "Choose your own Adventure," pick a bad one and you'll regret that choice for the next 12 months.)
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Beyond the Basics: Answers,Delivered
Today,I found that answer..on a random Google search.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/346710/fidgety_babies_of_diabetic_moms_dont_get_large/?print=true
Brief Summary: in some mothers with diabetes,babies don't get large because the kid is so hyperactive that they essentially block those excess calories and turn out normal weight. Regardless of your BG control.
And reading that was like the floodgates of Heaven coming down and illuminating
my poor,confused little brain..because from Week Nine of my pregnancy straight through to delivery my Endo would warn me how I was set to have a very,very large baby. Most of pregnancy was spent in the mid-upper 6's a1c wise,& for me that was stellar good.And I kept wondering when that weight gain was going to hit(baby,not me. I had no problem packing on an extra 40 lb) & it never happened,which is why my OBGYN and peri never told me big baby diabetic horror stories and I was allowed to go to 39 weeks before scheduled induction(only my body decided 38 wk 4 days was its limit). The feeling of my OB
was if everything is going hunky dory,then the diabetes must be as well. And the feeling of the high risk perinatologist was
that if the scans/stress tests went ok then everything is good. I was set to be induced via them,but went into labor several days early. My Endo/CDE were pretty great about adjusting things,but it's something that you just have to plunge right into before you know how it will be. Anyway, based on all the stories I'd heard I was prepared for my kid to be larger but that didn't happen,& I now know it to be from his hyperactivity(Week 15-Week 38) the child is still a very,very active bundle of energy)..I guess hyperactivity has its perks. I guess it's partly a genetic and partly a personality thing. The thing is,the human body does things we still don't understand..and why some people have a1cs of 4.8 and 10 lbs babies and others a 7.0 and a 7 lb x oz babies no one really gets. It's not all control and it's not all genetics. I think people blame diabetes far too much for everything. And while the truth of the matter is that another pregnancy could yield a totally different child(& birth weight)knowing this has solved the "why" and proved that doctors really don't know everything.
