Mastering Your Diabetes Assessment

So, I said in my last post that my next post would be an assessment of the 5 day training I participated in at the Diabetes Research Institute in Miami, Fl.  I have been struggling with writing it and have not decided on the approach I wish to take but I want to write this post so that I can move on.  I do feel a bit stuck after the course.  I learned some things and I was able to connect to others who are dealing with the disease but it seemed to end and did not have a sustaining effect.  I am sure that others at the course got a lot out of it as they were able to fill voids in what they did not know.  Nevertheless, I give the training an 8 out of 10.  It covered the foundational issues and offered advanced techniques in controlling blood sugars.  In addition, it had an effective psychological perspective built into it.  I believe that there is ongoing process of acceptance that is dealt with by the Type 1 diabetic.  Perhaps some experience it differently.  Perhaps some have the ability to go through the process and be done with it.  I Accept it! Period!  I seem to been unable to do that.  There remains remnants of not accepting it and wanting it to be otherwise.  To a large degree this has probably held me back.  However, a different perspective may see that this attitude may have steered me in a direction that has brought me here today.  I have always wanted to not have diabetes since I got it.  I guess one way to do that is to continue to search for a path that resolves my desire.  Perhaps this is the true path of healing, at least for me.  Anyways, I have done it.  I have written the assessment.  It is not the assessment that I thought I would write.  No, I thought I would write with more detail on this.

I feel it is time to move past the course.  In the end, I recommend this course for anyone with Type 1 Diabetes and family members.  It is tremendously informative and the people who run the course are good and compassionate people.  The course materials offer the best foundational springboard for anyone dealing with this disease who does not have a springboard in place.  The better the springboard the easier to get up on the high wire of blood sugar control.  Education and knowledge and skill development is critical.  But remember that you can only hold and utilize the knowledge and skills that you possess in the container that you have built to hold such thing.  Your container has several sides to it.  They are all made of thought and the final vessel is the combination and strength of those thoughts;  Your Attitude.  To become conscious of your current Attitude and to begin building a new vessel, if that is what you wish to do, then contemplate words such as …………..opinions, facts, beliefs, feelings, intentions, fears, strengths, weaknesses, needs, wants, expectations, desires, demands, fantasies, prejudices, habits and faith.  Till next time…….Michael

Mastering Your Diabetes Course

So, I am taking this course down in Miami called “Mastering Your Diabetes.”  It is offered by the The Diabetes Research Foundation(DRI).  I am in day 2 of 5.  I mentioned this blog site to the participants and staff and hope they read some of the postings.  I became a bit emotional today as we were all interacting and sharing more about our individual stories regarding diabetes.  There is a 14 year old boy who has Type 1 diabetes.  He is from Columbia and is a star soccer player.  He looks a lot like a looked when I was 14 and diagnosed.  At that time I was a star soccer player. Or, at least I would like to think so.  I became emotional when his mother who is with him through the whole course began to speak of her son and how well he is dealing with his condition.  She went further and spoke of his younger brother who has been with him in the past during his insulin pump training and his desire to support his older brother with diabetes.  As I was driving home I reviewed this morning’s events and my emotional response and came up with three reasons(thoughts) I was having at the time.  First, I was seeing myself in him.  I am 46 years old and at the same time I am feeling intensely myself as a 14 year old being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.  Second, I was feeling the mother’s love for her son and I was, at the same time, feeling the love I have and the tremendous support I received from my Mom.  I saw and felt her courage, her compassion as well as her uncertainty and fear.  I sympathized with her and I admired her.  But, most of all I thought of this boy’s little brother and I felt the closeness they must have and the pain they must feel.  And, I thought of my brother who was and is the same way.  As I write this I am allowing myself to feel the full brunt of emotion that was beginning to break through this morning but I would not allow to come through completely.   Let’s see what the next three days bring.  My next posting will be a final assessment of the course.

Feed The Warrior

“Feed the Warrior by training the body to follow the mind.”  I heard Lance Armstrong say this on a TV commercial the other day.  It sounds like a quote from the Marines but it may be a Lance Armstrong original, I don’t know.  I have been thinking about it in terms of how I deal with my Type 1 diabetes.  Dealing with Type 1 diabetes requires a creation of a manual system to deliver insulin and to obtain and maintain good blood sugar levels.  The body is a manifestation of the mind.  At the same time the body and mind are forever connected and interconnected in our present state as human beings.  In my yoga training I was taught that the mind has a casual body and the body has a gross mind.  The warrior in us is an attitude.  It is an attitude that can be described with characteristics like persistence, confidence, strength and courage among others.  This is the attitude that is best adopted when confronting and dealing with an “enemy” such as diabetes.  Perhaps enemy is too strong a word for some of you.  If it is, then replace it with opponent.  But make not mistake, we are always in a state of competition.  You can choose to sit on the sidelines and not engage or you can strive to be on the starting team and play like you mean it.  That part is up to you.    So, with respect to taking on Type 1 Diabetes, we are tasked with staying alive and maintaining health by injecting insulin, taking close account of what we eat, exercising (or not), and testing blood sugar levels to obtain feedback on how well we are balancing.  It requires constant contact with the enemy/opponent.  Ok, I am going to go out on a limb here and tell you that my highest goal in this fight is to defeat the enemy.  I have chosen not to play this game in a way where I become friends or partners with my opponent.  I have decided not to relent or concede defeat to the disease.  My objective is to win.  And for me, that means I have defeated my opponent and I move on to the next competition that is placed in front of me.  I intend to “heal” diabetes.  I intend to experience a day in my life when I can say the game is over with this opponent.  I have never and will never come to a point of acceptance of its power over me.  That would be defeat.  I believe that this warrior attitude I have cultivated has been the primary reason why I am healthy after 31 years of fighting.  At times it has not felt like a fair fight.  I have gotten depressed, have lost hope, felt defeated, wanted to give up but for some reason have been blessed with strong support of others who are my “brothers and sisters in arms.”  They have helped me stay alive to fight the next day and the next.   Think about the advantages of making the warrior attitude yours.  I believe that in our current situation on earth there is really no better choice.  Always remember that the enemy or opponent is never found in another person and neither is your warrior.  Others are cast members in your movie.  Some may appear as opponents but they are only acting as a mirror for you to see the direction to take.  Both the enemy and the warrior reside in you.  Which one will you feed?

Out of Control

The past few weeks have been challenging for me.   I had a record low reading of 27 at 4 in the morning.  I have been as high as 300.  I have used the analogy of flying a plane in describing what it is like to have to manually balance blood sugars.  I have never actually flown a plane so the analogy is really based off of what I would imagine it to be.  When I was in my 20’s I wrote a 3 page paper entitled “Walking the High Wire.”  I was describing the balancing act I engage in as I attempt to keep my blood sugars in as normal a range as I can.  Normal is between 80 and 120.  I think the biggest myth about diabetes is the thought concept that it is similar to having high blood pressure.  The Myth is that diabetes means you have high blood sugar and that if you take your medicine then it will bring it down.  Not exactly.  I am not saying that the two diseases are not alike.  In fact, they are.  It is just, like with any other disease, the medicine is only one component of many that are involved.  Our society’s understanding of disease is such that the component of medicine is often given more significance in the process of healing then it should.  This is understandable given the recent past’s and present advances in medicine.  This understanding of the process has created in our society’s consciousness an attitude that I think is not the most effective thought context to have in engaging with the issue of disease today.  This attitude has served us well up to this point but is now creating a toxic situation in the area of main stream health care.  Everything that is born must die.  This includes ways of doing things and ways of thinking about things.  The role of Medicine must be redefined.  It must be given its new role where it will flourish.  The current role that Medicine is playing here and now has ripened and fallen off the tree.  This is not a bad thing.  It is a good thing and a natural thing.   When the plane starts to experience turbulence it is sometimes hard to get back in balance.  The whole thing is compounded by the emotional and physical effects of the highs and the lows.  I feel depressed and anxious with highs and lows and I tend to overreact.  I know this much from past experience……….When I am out of control something is up.   What I mean by this is that I am up against an issue that I am dealing with.  Initially it is usually unconscious;  below the surface so to speak.  I have a choice.  I can suppress it and not deal with it and it will either persist or retreat to come back sometime in the future.  My other choice is to work it out.  To bring it to the surface of consciousness and address it.  What is it this time?  I am not quite sure but I have some clues.  Writing these blogs has helped me to work some of these issues out and to, consequently, get back in control.  It is a balancing act.  And as with balancing on a high wire when one side becomes heavier or lighter than the other side a correction must be made.  As with flying a plane, if the plane gets to an undesirable altitude then the pilot must make the necessary adjustments.  We are always seeking balance.  Yoga has taught me to come back to the breath first.  Start with deep breathing, then become conscious and finally let go.  As Type 1 diabetics we are given the task of seeking balance.  This can be either a constant pain in the ass or an opportunity for learning.  And the learned eventually become the teachers and so it goes.

A Transformational Approach to Type 1 Diabetes

I believe that we are here, on this planet, as human beings, to transform ourselves.  Transform means to change in form, appearance, structure, character.  I think this thing called life is set up like a game.  I don’t mean to trivialize it by comparing it to a a game but, nevertheless, I see it as a game.  Every game has an objective.  Every game has rules.  There are strategies involved.  Having continual increasing knowledge about the game helps.  There are skills involved and many who participate in games practice to hone their skills.  There is a way to measure outcomes; to keep score.  I think that the objective in the game of life is to transform.  To change.  Specifically, I believe that, in all areas of life, it is a transformation from a desire to receive for the self alone to the the desire to receive for the sake of sharing with others.  This is a Kabbalistic (From Kabbalah) concept.  But there is a problem.  In order to be here, to experience and engage in life we must have certain needs fulfilled in certain time periods.  A lot of these needs are, most of the time, fulfilled automatically without us even being conscious of it.  When one of these needs fails to be fulfilled then we become conscious of it and it becomes a desire, often times a burning desire.  Most of these needs are physical in nature.  There are a lot that are not depending on the awareness level of the individual.  A few examples perhaps:  We need to breathe, often.  Our bodies are set up in a way that allows oxygen in either through the nose or the mouth.  We have a throat that acts as a tunnel for oxygen to travel to the lungs.  The lungs do their thing and oxygen is transferred into the blood cells and is carried through the veins and vessels to each individual cell and they stay alive and carry on with what they do.  In the absence of oxygen, a blockage in the nose, mouth, throat, a problem with the lungs or a disruption or block in the veins and vessels then this system that fulfills a critical need ceases to work and we quickly become conscious of it, if in fact we are able to stay conscious. Suddenly, this unconscious fulfilled need becomes a burning desire and we will not be very interested in transforming ourselves into a sharing being.  No, we will be pretty focused on getting air and will probably kill another if that would help at all to provide us with even a slight chance of fulfilling our desire to breathe.

Well, this whole Type 1 Diabetes thing can been seen in the same way.  Allow me to elaborate.  If you are a Type 1 Diabetic then one day in the past you learned that you “got” it.  Not a good day.  Not a day easily forgotten and not one that most of us like to revisit.  It was the day that you became conscious that a very critical need stopped being fulfilled; a need that parallels the importance of breathing, albeit with a 3 to 4 month time period prior to fatal malfunction as opposed to a 3 to perhaps, 10 minute time period to solve the breathing thing.  The process involved in Type 1 diabetes is very similar to the process of breathing.  Instead of oxygen being sent to the cells it is glucose. And instead of the lungs being the organ involved it is the pancreas.  Both glucose and oxygen are sent via the blood cells to all of the other cells.  Instead of breathing it involves eating.  And just like if you could not get oxygen to the cells the body will die so it is with not getting nourishment ( in the form of glucose ) to the cells.   An analysis of the situation yields four things to contemplate, in my opinion as someone who was diagnosed 31 years ago.  First, an understanding in the breakdown of the process that resulted in having to address this need.  Second, what is it that needs to get done in order to get the glucose to the cells in the most effective way.  Third, what is the desire that is associated with this situation.  And finally, for extra credit, how do I transform this desire from a desire to receive for the self alone to a desire to receive for the sake sharing with others? Continue reading A Transformational Approach to Type 1 Diabetes