When You Hear Hoofbeats, Think Diabetes.

One of the most frustrating things about being a Diabetic is that when you get sick, your blood sugars go haywire and everything spins out of control. A common cold can send your Diabetes into a downward spiral and give you crazy numbers for days.

On the other side of this really fun spectrum is the fact that a lot of common health problems or aches and pains you have are caused BY Diabetes. So because of that, every Diabetic has to deal with that elephant in the room: Type 1 Diabetes. You can't have ANYTHING medically wrong with you without medical professionals or the people you're close to asking if it's because of your blood sugar.

And this pisses me off. My poor parents have gotten the worst of my backlash from this. But the truth is, sometimes a headache is just a headache. It's a my-blood-sugar-is-100-not-600-every-day-headache that requires Advil, not insulin. Sometimes it's not even a medical problem that raises suspicion: 

Me: I need to pee.
Mom: Have you checked your blood sugar today?

Me: It's hot in here. I'm sweating.
Dad: What are your sugars?


And I get it. Parents worry. But what's really fun is when you actually have to HIDE your Diabetes from health care providers in order to receive treatment for some other problem. I'm talking to you, TCU Health Center.

Every time I have gone into the university health center for some issue, they circle it back around to my Diabetes. This includes holding me hostage, putting an IV in me to flush my ketones (even when there are none there to flush), calling my mother, and sending me to the closest hospital for Diabetic Keto-Acidosis.

Seriously, y'all. I can remember 3 instances where I went to the on-campus clinic and my Diabetes was blamed for my health issues. Those 3 times I had the flu, Pink Eye, and a sinus infection consecutively. Rather than focusing on these issues, the doctors hounded me about Diabetes and created imaginary disease-related problems.

While it's good to be on top of things, the problem is that it makes me wary to even inform them of my Diabetes on future visits. 

This past semester I sprained my ankle really bad and as I was filling out the paperwork in the waiting room I got to the line that reads, "Do you have any chronic illnesses?" Nah.                                             


















Call me paranoid, but I knew that these crazies would probably find a way to blame my Diabetes for my sprain. Something along the lines of my Diabetes ran up behind me, twisted my ankle, and voila! There's your problem.

Now, I won't be stupid about it. Health care providers need to be aware of chronic illnesses in their patients. But they also need to be aware that people with these illnesses can have other, unrelated things wrong with them.

So when you hear hoofbeats, it's really not always horses. Every now and then you get diabetic zebras.