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  1. Guilt, with a side order of guilt

    Saturday 22 August 2009


    I have this problem. I'll mentally compose a post for here, but by the time I actually get a chance to sit down and write it down, I forget what I was going to say in the first place. And then I feel guilty. Which strangely enough, is what has been preying on my mind a lot lately.

    I tend to feel a lot of guilt, over a lot of things. I'm not sure why. But when it comes to the whole subject of guilt, there are two schools of thought that I always seem to remember. Number one is that guilt is normal, but you shouldn't let it eat you alive. Number two was something that I read in a book several years ago. Which was 'guilt is a self-indulgence'. Battling between these two ideas often ends up with my feeling guilty about feeling guilty. Which can get dizzying.

    But, what have I got to feel guilty about, you might ask? Oh, just about everything. If I eat lunch too late, having a lie in on a Saturday morning, which means I didn't probably eat breakfast early enough. Taking a lift home from work that was offered, instead of walking, which means I probably didn't exercise enough that day. Not drinking enough water. Forgetting to log down my BS scores for 5 days, choosing to leave them in my meter instead, which means I couldn't see any patterns forming.

    If I have a score that's over 7 mmol/L, I'm cursing myself for what I could have eaten to push myself up. If I'm anything lower than 4, I'm telling myself that I've chosen foods that were too high GI, or been irresponsible for leaving it too long without eating, or not testing enough. If I have a snack, I beat myself for a lack of self control, and for being 'bad'. Any hypo is obviously a source of feelings of failure.

    When they weren't sure whether I had T1 or T2, I was hoping and praying that it would be confirmed as T1. Not that I wanted either one, obviously, but because of T1 being an auto-immune condition, which means there was less way I could be blamed for it. Now, please don't read into this that I think people with T2 are to blame for their diabetes. I don't, but so many people do seem to think that, and I, in my selfishness, wasn't sure that I could cope with that. But of course, I remain unconvinced that I didn't in some way, do something to cause my T1.

    Pre-diagnosis, I did, as many people do, lose a lot of weight. I'm actually fairly convinced that I lost a lot of it on the days leading up to going into hospital. I lost about a stone. And of course, on one level, I'm fairly pleased with this, because I needed and wanted to lose some weight. But now, every time someone congratulates me on losing it, I feel bad, because it wasn't through my own efforts. And even though I'm now the thinnest I've been in years, apparently my BMI is still 29, which makes me heavily into overweight on those charts, and on the border of being obese.

    I have clinic on Monday, and wondering about what my A1c is going to be is driving me crazy. I was at 8.8 last time I had it done, and I'm hoping so badly that I've brought it down, but I'm not convinced.

    So what do you do with it all? I have absolutely no idea...

    xx


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