11 Comments

  1. Well said! Over-sensationalisation doesn’t help anyone. Following the cgm announcement the other day I saw it every where. I was never sure I agreed with it being hailed as a life saving device. I wear it a lot & it can’t stop all hypos….being called a life saving device just increases my personal frustration when I have to then explain it properly when I am almost accused of still having hypos despite wearing it. It also gives the public a sense that if we have it all our problems are solved.

    • I’m also conflicted about CGM being called life-saving. I know that some people I know, and that’s especially applicable to parents of young kids, feel CGM may have saved their or their kids’ lives by alerting to a bad low that would have otherwise be missed or discovered much later. But then again, the reality is that dying from low blood sugar is rare. Fear is a powerful motivator to skew the facts.
      It is hard to explain to the public what our devices do. Many people are under the impression that the pump does everything by itself, life an AP would. It takes some explaining for them to realize how inaccurate that perception is.

  2. Love that we have the ability to provide a glimpse of what really living with d’ is like. Good to meet you through d’ blog week!

  3. I’ve been mulling these thoughts recently. I think that as a parent to a T1 my focus is sometimes too much on what he has to go through and that leads to me casting him in the role of a victim or sufferer. I’m trying hard to work on this as I know that it will do him no favours as an adult to be perceived to be at the mercy of his condition.

    On the other hand, these things are true. Insulin shots are life saving. An untreated hypo overnight can lead to unconsciousness. As a parent I want people to acknowledge this (partly for my son’s safety), then and only then can we move on to focus on the child’s achievements. That’s the stage we’re at.

    It’s a tricky one, but I love to hear adults with Type 1 express their views and find their language so I can explore the language my son and I might use going forward.

    I was reading this blog last night which is related to MS, but is very eloquent on the issues.

    http://www.trippingonair.com/2016/04/to-be-or-not-to-be-walking-billboard.html?spref=fb

  4. Hi Frank. Thank you for another thoughtful post. One let us say ‘controversial topic’ in the language space for diabetes is often about diet and individual choice. The fact is that, as I have mentioned in other posts, dietary choices prescribed by dietitians have been restricted by the past education and pressures on Aussie trained and registered dietitians to not prescribe low carb diets. So we get children with diabetes being prescribed high carb diets and see the lamentations of how difficult it is for them and their parents to keep their BSLs in any range. And an acceptance that children’s growth and perhaps more spontaneous activity makes bsl control less possible even with insulin pumps and cgm. But the DAA and DA, rather than admit they have been wrong, have started to talk about ‘individualisation’ of diets , a phrasing similar to what the ADA are starting to do. The ADA have already made concessions about low carb diets being an acceptable way for Type 2 diabetics to lose weight (the other two being gastric stapling and very low calorie diets). Rather than admit these entities were wrong, the language is used to ‘smooth over’ the discrepancy as more and more scientists and other start to show up the flawed science and vested interests which have plagued diabetes treatment for so long.

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