Expertise

06/20/08 Living Well

“How long did it take for you to become proficient at handling your diabetes?”

That’s a difficult question, and one posed to me recently by a mother who is desperate for an understanding about this disease.  Her quest revolves around the treatment of her four-year-old daughter. My heart went out to her, and I responded with the only answer I could, “I’m no expert. I just understand how my body functions and what works for me.”

The look on her face revealed that wasn’t exactly the answer she sought. I didn’t blame her. A chronic disease is something that can never be fully harnessed, and swallowing that pill is painful.

I implement the Black Box theory in managing my diabetes. Essentially, all that matters is output. Input (our constantly changing daily life) goes into the box and subsequently encounters the variables under manipulation: food, medication, and exercise. You manage what you can of your daily life by focusing on your food, medication, and exercise, and then view the output. If the results are to your liking—good HbA1c, tightly controlled blood glucose, and an overall high quality of life—then you maintain what you’ve been doing. If not, adjust your variables until you arrive at the desired output.

The underlying aspect of this premise is that input is uncontrollable, but how you work with it is. Therefore, you can learn how your body reacts to all the entities: healthy food, junk food, exercise, alcohol, etc., by making a lab of yourself. I like to say that I am my own test subject, and being such is the only way that I’ve achieved the desired output. For me that is healthy blood readings and a high quality of life. I seek balance, not perfection. Despite all the assistance from many well-intentioned practitioners, perfection is not always the goal. Numbers in a logbook do not tell the entire story. But unfortunately, numbers often become the focus for many of us.

For this mother and for all of you, my advice stems from some hard-won knowledge and practical application of such: Know yourself in body, mind, and spirit. Control what you can to the best of your abilities. Find balance and then let the rest go.

With that said, I understand that this is not easily applied, especially with a young child. How can he or she know his or her mind? Obviously that’s impossible, but the ability to know one’s body can exist. Ask a child with diabetes at any age how it feels to be high or low, and you’ll get a rather vivid image. They know and we do too. Trusting our expertise is frightening, but in the end it is the most potent medicine of all.

Eric Devine, 30, has lived with type 1 diabetes since he was 12. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters where he works as a high school English teacher. Devine is an avid writer and is currently seeking publication of two Young Adult novel manuscripts.