My quote on Facebook this morning was a Spanish proverb that translates: A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
Someone mentioned how easy it is to lose sight of how important it is to take care of our health. It is so easy I think we all could use a little reminder most days!
But I think having diabetes, either type one or type two, just complicates the idea. First of all, do we consider ourselves “healthy” to begin with? And secondly, we can never escape taking care of our disease so don’t we get credit for that? (Of course we do!)
I think oftentimes we feel like we “fight” diabetes in our own bodies. The explained and unexplained blood sugar changes have spent years teaching us that our body really is a battleground. The weapons on both sides include finger pokes, needle jabs, low sweats, high dry mouths, dropping anxieties, climbing moments of apprehension, expired insulin, scar tissue, beeps, alarms, dried up jelly beans, cans of Coke, old test strips, and a zillion other minute and ever-present aspects of our lives with diabetes.
So isn’t it enough that we fight that fight every moment of every day? Why should we have to fight even MORE to take care of our bodies?
Well, I don’t really have a good answer for that. I think the best thing for each of us to do is simply shift our perspective on what life is like when we live with diabetes.
We have a constant “fight” with diabetes that will never go away. There are a load of ways we can equip ourselves for the battle, though, and assure our victory. Most of them are not quick fixes and will take some continual tweaking over the course of our lives, but it’s good to get a start as soon as we can. Diabetes doesn’t take a break and neither should we if we want to keep the upper hand.
I think first off, we need to learn to accept the disease. One of the parents in the video about Bearskin Meadow Camp and the Diabetic Youth Foundation said he learned how much better it was for him to see a high and deal with it rather than agonize over the why behind every single one: it’s a high, there will be more, and let’s take care of it as soon as we can so that we can continue with life. Keep management of the numbers as realistic as you can, and forget the concept of “control”—it isn’t possible to control any aspect of our diabetes. If you were the boss at your job, would you think you controlled your employees?? Kick the notion to the curb and pick up the idea of “management” instead.
After that, we need to also take care of the rest of our bodies. Just because we have this “fight” with our disease doesn’t mean that we can ignore our muscles and bones any more than we can ignore the dirt and grime in the bathroom just because we’re doing a great job at keeping the kitchen clean.
Life just doesn’t work like that.
We can work together and get your body up to speed when it comes to physical fitness since the strength of your physical body will certainly help you succeed in battle. You need as good a support team as possible to keep up your fight! The health of your body depends on it.
