On an overnight trip to Dallas two weeks ago, I broke out in some rather ugly hives — again! My lips poofed up like I’d been slammed with a hockey puck, and my right eye went all ape-like. This lasted for several days. It was that damn gluten allergy again, I must assume, although for the life of me I can’t figure out what I “ate wrong.”
This experience reminded me about a post from just about exactly three years ago, which kind of sums it up. I’m thinking No. 4 needs to be moved up (!) :
Seven Things Worse Than the Diabetes
Diabetes. That all-consuming pain in the @$$… But I like to remind myself that there are worse things. No, really, there are. Make a list. Here’s mine:
1. Aging. The front of my hair is getting thin. And my face looks so drawn in photos these days. I miss that fresh-faced girl.
2. The Carpal Tunnel Syndrome — crippling for anyone wh
o sits at a keyboard as much as I do.
3. Gluten-intolerance. No wheat = high-maintenance lifestyle. Ugh.
4. Yeast where it doesn’t belong. Enough said.
5. Future Anxiety — which I try to keep in check — but what will become of us someday? Will we have kidney failure and become incontinent? (Sorry, but the mind is unruly at times)
6. Parenting Anxiety — what will become of our little ones? Will they contract some (possibly worse) chronic disorder? Or worse yet, run into some loon who turns out to be a predator?
7. “Too Profitable to Cure.” If this is The Anadulterated Truth, may all the responsible parties be struck by lightening.
There now. Feel better? Me neither. But it helps to share.
Editor’s note: I was tempted to add “housework” to this list, but decided that might be just a little too whiney.
That last one gets on my nerves very much. When one considers just how much a single test strip costs, I about lose it. That alone is a multi-million dollar business. One thing that gives me hope on a daily basis is the active criticism of the system that can be found in blogs like this. There cannot be too much. It’s a shame we can put a man on the moon and yet no very real progress has been made in the form of ‘cure’, especially in reference to type 1. Active patient pundits are neccessary and in the long run may be the deciding difference. Because face it, we have the most to gain…
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Health_Posts: DiabetesMine: Wayback Wednesday: Seven Things Worse Than the Diabetes http://bit.ly/FFJc9
#diabetes…
As always, Amy nails it!!
I think “housework” would have been a good one. The hardest part of the housework for me is everytime you pick something up, towel off the floor, sweep something, whatever it is, there is just one random test strips laying there. Parenting anxiety is my worst one. I am not ready to have a little one yet, but I think about it almost everyday because I don’t know if my girlfriend would be able to handle it at first because she is already so freaked out that when I go to sleep my sugar will drop so low I won’t wake up.
It surprises me that medical science apparently still does not fully understand T1. I guess the T cell autoimmune attack explanation is simplified and leaves out a lot of detail in how it occurs.
Five years since dx, I continue to be blown away by how inconvenient it is when the body cannot make insulin. Just a couple generations ago, diabetes was a much harder disease to manage. Lots of good people are working on it. We’ve already got fast analog insulins, small syringes, and accurate, portable bg meters. I believe treatment options will continue to improve and yes, someday, a future generation will benefit from a cure.
I’d have to go with;
Cancer, nuff said
IBS, hard to leave the house
annoying in laws, I can bolus for high, or treat a low, but, irritating inlaws, outside of divorce, there is no cure!!
others could be Insurance Co. bureacrats,denial letters, black box labeled drugs, that Ins. will cover, but, not the FDA cleared, med, that they have been paying for for yrs. GRRRR!!!
But that is related to the diabetes.
I had a long conversation about the “too profitable to cure” problem at the last diabetes conference I was at. This is one place where I thank God for a free market economy. Whoever develops the “cure” first will 1) charge an obscene amount that we’ll all willingly pay and 2) patent it so that no one else can develop it. They will then cure any who are able to pay their absurd cost since to them it’s all about making money. In reality it won’t be the meter companies, the pump companies, or the insulin companies that develop the cure because the research wouldn’t be cost-effective for them but someone new will come in and put them all out of business. The one we’ve gotta hope for the pure scientific community to stumble on the right one. But when they do, yes, they will market it and it will be available for us to buy if we can pay their price.
It was all too clear to me how uncomfortable the gluten thing is for you, as I sat across the table and watched your lip double in size right before my eyes.
It was an eye opener for me, because I didn’t realize just how drastic and different people’s reactions to their allergies can be.