I am newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (three and a half weeks in), and I am now in the middle of my third week of Low Carb High Fat eating. I am not on any drugs, having decided to try and lower my blood sugar with diet and exercise.
I was prescribed Metformin, but I am reluctant to go that route as I have managed to shift a lot of weight already - around a stone and a half so far, after making changes to my diet and exercise around 5 weeks ago before I had the HbA1c test.
I made bigger changes when I got my blood monitor and started testing and eating to the meter, with initial results in the first few days being lots of 8s with the occasional 7s and 9s. So far I am having good results with the blood sugars, with them now daily 6s, with the occasional 5s and 7s, from a HbA1c on diagnosis of 82 (9.65).
I felt very stressed yesterday, and I felt rather tearful and mentally exhausted. I am dealing with the mechanics of everything reasonably well, and my blood sugars are coming down, but I feel like I am having a bit of a delayed reaction to the stress of the diagnosis now, after pushing my feeling to one side in order to deal with the changes I needed to make. I also saw that the blood sugars shot straight up into the 7s as soon as I started to feel stressed yesterday, and I saw a similar effect last week when feeling particularly stressed - Wednesday is not my best day of the week.
Everything feels rather overwhelming at the moment. Dealing with a life long health condition seems suddenly rather daunting, and I have also recently been diagnosed with another condition that requires management. I am someone who has hardly ever been to the doctor's as I have rarely been ill apart for the usual flu and colds occasionally. Any other health issues have been treatable and then not an issue any more.
I am wondering if anyone has any tips for dealing with stress and the emotional issues around having a long term health condition? My husband has MS and I am all too aware of how hard things can be emotionally when dealing with a long term condition with an uncertain outcome.
When I saw the Diabetic nurse a few days after diagnosis, she talked a lot about what she seemed to think were inevitable complications of a progressive disease: blindness, amputations, stroke and death through heart disease! Fortunately I had already been on this forum or I might have flown straight to Switzerland to book myself into Dignitas. After her little pep talk my blood pressure was the highest it has ever been.
In my experience, dealing with a chronic illness definitely has similarities with the Kugler-Ross 5 stages model of grief - Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance, and I have seen these cycle around with my husband's MS in no particular order. I am feeling a lot of weight on my shoulders at the moment as I am the one in the caring role and now I have a couple of health issues of my own to deal with.
Every Wednesday I drive 90 miles each way to see my parents and do some shopping for them and help them deal with any issues that have come up as they are both finding themselves struggling with health issues.
I have a couple of big bottles of bubble bath in, so I am going to get to bed earlier and have a relaxing bath over the next few nights. This evening I will be having a reflexology treatment, which really helped last week to bring the sugars down after a really stressful couple of hours with my parents.
I am considering taking some meditation classes at a local Buddhist centre as I have always been terrible at relaxing, and even thinking about relaxing makes me a as stiff as a board!!
Has anyone else tried anything for stress relief that you have found useful? I would like to feel more able to deal with this emotionally long term, and I think that may be taking one day at a time and not stressing about things too much - if that is possible for me!
Allie