Recently I read a post at the “Angry type 2 diabetic” about how the Mary Greeley Medical Center, in Ames, Iowa, had medical professionals live like a diabetic for 24 hours. It reminded me of my nurse practitioner from years ago.
She was taking a course at Joslin about diabetes treatment. Each medical professional had to act like a diabetic with a particular treatment plan. I forget what type of treatment plan she chose. The thing was, she only kept to the treatment plan for a few hours. She said that she “got the idea” after that. I was thinking “Oh no you didn’t.”
We have to continue to stab our fingers and test our blood. We have to count carbs and give ourselves insulin. We have to do that EVERYDAY. There is no vacations, there is no break, there is no “getting the idea”. This darn disease doesn’t stop.
And she wouldn’t even try to do it for more than a few hours. Sigh.
- http://theangrytype2diabetic.blogspot.com/2012/01/could-your-doctor-handle-24-hours-with.html
- Photo credit: mconnors from morguefile.com
That’s really sad, and disappointing to hear. I guess she completely missed the point of the exercise… that it’s not about “getting the idea” of how it works but about getting how incredibly exhausting, and demanding, this disease is… how annoying, and inconvenient… and how there’s NO getting off, there’s no vacations, like you so well put.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
There is one point that this exercise (even if well executed) doesn’t address. To non-diabetics, even if they go through the entire day doing the “things we do”, they know at the end of the day, they can go back to normal. They know that there is a 24 hour time limit on their inconvenience. They know that this will end for them. But for us… it’s for the rest of our lives. Eternity. Forever. This is a HUGE emotional and mental grievance all diabetics face that also takes an enormous toll on our bodies and on our health overall. The mental part of a chronic disease is half of the disease. The only way I can see them fixing this is through some kind of virtual reality. I wonder if a diagnosis hospital will create something like that for the family of patients for say, diabetes, cancer, aids, etc. It would be something I would love for my family to be able to understand.