I can talk for hours about diabetes. Literally. Get me started and I have to be forcibly removed from my soapbox at some point for the sake of other people’s sanity. In a way, it’s quite nice to have a condition that has so many ;
Iconic One Theme | Powered by Wordpress
I think I’d have to add in a word about the T1/T2 difference (because I have to everytime I explain to a younger member of the family why ‘Grandad doesnt have to have injections but he’s diabetic…’)
Maybe: My pancreas is totally broken and doesnt make any insulin at all. Without insulin my body cant use the food I eat for energy. So I have to replace it with injections/pump. Its a balancing act between the insulin I give and the food I eat and the exercise I do and the stress I’m under and other external conditions over which I have no control. Its difficult but manageable. Grandad’s (or Type 2s’, depending on who I’m talking to) pancreas still works a bit, but it needs help, so he takes tablets and might have to inject insulin in the future.
I think I can get that out in a minute if I talk fast enough…
I go normally for a mix of the basic with the brief followed by a rant of
“you have no idea what its like just because you watched an episode of casualty once where a diabetic truck driver caused a pile up on the M1”
… There’s a reason why I try to avoid the subject, PR is not an inherent skill to engineers!
The main thing I would explain is: insulin lowers blood sugar and food raises it. The number of times I’ve tested my blood in the company of non-trained non-diabetics and if it’s been low they’ve always automatically said in pseudo-knowledgeable style, ‘Oh, so that means you must need some insulin’. Quite important to get that one right . . .
Choose 1 of following:
1)If I don’t inject insulin, I will become a skeleton.
2)Embalm me with some insulin, or else dump rotting bits in bin.
3)My antidotal insulin can sometimes also be poison.
On a bad day I would say
” do you seriously think I would have lost 75% of my sight if it was as easy as not eating chocolate”.
On a good day a brief mixture of balancing insulin with food until their expression becomes glazed.
@megs – the not eating chocolate thing always irritates me for some reason. I then start on a more-than-one-minute lecture on how chocolate has a high fat content therefore has a low glyceamic index and therefore moderately diabetic-friendly. The eyes usually start to glaze over by that point.
In answer to @Alison‘s original question, I don’t think it’s physically possible for me to talk about diabetes in less than minute. However, if people get away without diagrams being drawn then they’re doing well!
I must have led a charmed life – do you know (clearly you don’t so I’m going to tell you) that no-one has ever asked me anything about my diabetes or professed to know more than me or mentioned the fact I am eating something sweet when I ‘shouldn’t be’ or anything like that.
I can only presume that the prominent gun marked ‘for people who ask idiotic questions or who just annoy me) that I wear strapped across my chest is working.