Ask HN: How do I cope with being a young diabetic?
I am in early twenties, I had difficulties with choosing a major (my mother forced me to choose a major) this lead to three years wasted at college without advancing and needing to change major to Compsci and by then I discovered that I can't change my major anymore and my only solution (at the moment) was to go to private school and I couldn't afford that.My mother explained that she forced to choose that major so I can be near (a very dump explanation) this lead to fights with her and a lot of stress and this led to me getting diabetes type 2 (and because of bad diet too).I am in a very position now: I can't handle stress the way a healthy person does.I can't do any high stress stuff (starting a startup, handle corporate culture).I tried freelancing but clients are very cheap.
How can I cope with this (feeling of being disadvantaged)?
For HNers with medical conditions that can't tolerate stress: how do you handle it?
11 comments
[ 0.69 ms ] story [ 39.4 ms ] threadYour question is vague considering the type of advice you're looking for. What is your living situation like? Do you have any immediate concerns? Besides just general "stress", what bothers you the most? If you're willing to share, how recent is your diagnosis?
One overall suggestion I have for you is to not psych yourself out. If you convince yourself that you have a low stress tolerance, you will. Having a medical condition that is exacerbated by stress is legitimate, but if you avoid all stress and never develop coping mechanisms then you will be worse off. If you notice yourself stressing about stress itself, just take a deep breath (I mean physically stop what you're doing and breathe in and out over the course of several seconds) and find out what's really bothering you.
In terms of your health, you should find a good endocrinologist if you weren't referred to one already. This isn't meant to be medical advice, but type 2 diabetes is curable. It tends to be easier to cure if you take care of it sooner rather than later though, and after 6-7 years it is effectively permanent. A young person with the condition should be able to gradually lower his insulin resistance and become healthy again if he treats it as a priority.
My background is in healthcare and computers - if you are in the United States and need help with health insurance or Medicare I can look into it: sam (at) mangane.se
Get your health in order by no longer eating garbage. Your body is riding the insulin roller coaster and it's giving out. Eat meat, dairy, and vegetables only. The conventional wisdom, the USDA, and the farm lobby insist on carbs being a big part of your diet, but they're not the ones with diabetes (they're the ones who gave it to you).
Steer clear of all carbonated beverages from Diet Coke to Perrier. The CO2-punch to the gut from sodas stimulates ghrelin, which'll make you hungry in 2 hours, and aggravate your diabetes in a half-dozen ways.
This won't solve all your problems, but it's remarkable how much easier life feels when you're not going through it sick.
You can only steer life with what you can influence, try to gain influence of your own life, you don't have to be rude. Rome wasn't built in a day, life is like sailing you have to steer slowly and steadily. Hopefully you will do better than me, for I learnt this wisdom have an estranded relationship with my mother for 2 decades to the extent that I did not attend her funeral. Have take hypnosis therapy to move past life decisions that I had no control over. All I can share is my sugar is in much better control.
If you are living with controlling parents or other controlling people, you need to very quietly start laying the groundwork for getting out of that situation (without signalling to them that you are moving on -- that only gives them the chance to sabotage your efforts). Don't keep people close to you and give them control over your life who don't genuinely respect you and have your best interests at heart.
Second, you need to prioritize taking care of your health.
Third, you need to stop focusing so much on what you can't do and start focusing more on what you can do.
I come from a relationship with my family like the one you described. Now my mother is dead, my father married another woman and all the advice and control they gave me is gone and they barely remember these expectations which some of them I fulfilled but actually at some point I left my home and worked in another city without having money to pay even my lunch. That made me make a lot of money, move from a third world country and meet the love of my life. I didn't have diabetes so maybe for you it might be different, but unless you take control of your life and start to have frequently moments which you are 100% responsible for, you will never truly live.
I always felt weak and had my fair amount of health imperfections, but I once thought that if I'm a bird with an undeveloped wing and I need to do my first flight, I would rather crash my face to the ground and die than to live a shitty life being abused by everybody.
Maybe you can fix your disadvantage with your brain and become a bird that makes other birds fly for yourself.
Also take out this disadvantage mindset. You should make your strong points stronger. You have gone through some crazy shit that those perfect rich white males probably never went. So at least at something you can excell.
Please also take my opinion with a grain of salt, you know your life better than me. Cheers
Diabetes makes me hate my life, no question about it, but at least having some control over it makes some days bearable at least.
How are your kidneys and eyes?
Once I sort all of this out and some personal finances, THEN I can worry about "high stress stuff". In the meantime I'll work my loss stress job and play WoW.
My advice is (1) decide that your health always comes first, and (2) your glucometer is your guardian angel.
If you follow (1) by promising yourself and all relevant others that you will never let the demands of work put your health at risk and simply follow that rule all the time, that may remove much of the stress, because you have much less to fear, and because the relevant others all are on notice that whatever good you do for them is contingent on you being able to do it.
The glucometer thing is what makes the strategy reality based for all concerned. If you feel that work-related stress is messing with your glucose levels, take a test, and if you are out of the range you want to live in, take a break from work, adjust your food or meds as indicated, keep testing, and do not work until you have controlled the glucose problem.
If you use the glucometer frequently enough and react accordingly to what it tells you, you can probably have pretty decent control of your glucose levels. I remember reading somewhere that pretty decent control means about 2/3 reduction in complications from what you will get with typical control. Deaths from diabetic complications are now pretty typically delayed until the late 70's with such measures. That's not a cure, but it will give you a good chance of living until one shows up.
Caveats: (1) I'm type 1, so I don't know enough about type 2 to tell you how often you should be testing. For a type 1, I would suggest that 5 or 6 tests per day is a good idea. Maybe, if you take insulin, something around the same would work out. The rule I try to follow is that whenever I think I might need to test, I better test. (2) Diabetes can cause psychological problems. Give your MD an idea about any problems you have with stress, self-control and compliance with the prescribed regimen, and if the MD thinks you need any help with that, comply.