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Type 1 Please help me with my friend

J

jim1234

Newbie
Messages
3
Type of diabetes
Don't have diabetes
Treatment type
I do not have diabetes
Hi everyone,

I hope you're having a nice Sunday. I'm posting here hoping for some advice on how to talk to a friend of mine who has Type I diabetes, diagnosed about 5 years ago. When diagnosed their partner at the time more or less took care of everything to do with their diabetes - making sure they were eating right, taking their insulin etc. Now my friend is single and is really struggling to look after themselves. It seems to me as though they are in denial about having diabetes at all. They rarely eat anything and drink alcohol fairly often. They say they:

Hated rapid acting insulin, that it made them feel worse, even with adjusted doses;
Hate injections at all but are using Tresiba but I think only once a day;
Don't want to plan what to eat or when to eat;
Don't want to use a pump because they hate the idea of something attached to them;
Haven't tested their blood sugars in over two years;
Think that it is better if they keep their blood sugars high and steady;
Have shown signs of hyperglycaemia lately e.g fungal infections, gum problems;
That they need someone to look after all of this for them.

I am so, so concerned for my friend, I don't want to see them lose their sight, develop kidney and heart problems, lose a foot or whatever, ultimately die before their time and have a poor quality of life before they do die. When I've tried to talk to them about it they get defensive, which I completely understand, but I just want to help them. I honestly don't know if any healthcare professional has tried to explain what could happen to my friend if they don't look after themselves properly, and if they have my friend has probably not listened. I don't know how to approach this because I know ultimately I can't make them look after themselves if they do not want to, but I don't think they realise how bad things could get for them if they can't get a handle on this. I've mentioned support groups as well and they dismissed the idea immediately. Please, please help me if you have any advice on how to approach this subject with some tact but also getting to the point; I struggle to not just say things as they are and I know that sometimes my approach is too direct for most people. I don't want my friend to feel as though they are being harassed, but I desperately want them to see the need there is for them to address this.
Please help me if you can, I love my friend dearly and I don't want to lose them.

Many thanks,

Jim1234
 
Your friend is an adult, you can't force him to take care of himself. However most people with Type 1 diabetes have been warned of the consequences of poor control ad infinitum, so it's highly unlikely he doesn't know, regardless of whether he is in denial or not.

There are so many things that could be causing his behaviour it's impossible to know enough to give you any meaningful advice. There are some things you might want to consider, though. Is he depressed? or is this part of a pattern of behaviour,? If his previous partner looked after him before, he may have some sort of issue in this area, that would be very complicated to deal with.The best option is that he starts to take care of himself, it may be that positive encouragement is better than fear, as a method to do this, especially if he is depressed. But it's hard to give you any useful advice.

I hope I'm not being too blunt, and that some of this is useful.
 
Hi Alison54321,

No no, you're not being blunt at all, I'm glad of your advice. I know it's up to my friend to look after themselves, and I know ultimately the onus is upon them to do so, but I just hope I can manage to help them see how important it is that they do so. I know what you mean about fear vs positive encouragement though. I don't think my friend is depressed but in terms of a pattern of behaviour I think you are right. I think I didn't make myself clear - I apologise, I'm finding this very hard to put into words - , but maybe more what I am looking for is advice on how to approach the subject with my friend in the first place. Maybe, as someone who doesn't have diabetes, I should have asked if anyone else here could share their experiences about dealing with a diagnosis and the very fact that lifestyle changes need to be made at all. I have my own health problems separate from this and I have tried to put myself in my friend's shoes, but ultimately I know we have different health problems so I can probably only empathise to a certain extent, which may not be useful enough to help them.
Although I don't have diabetes, I can imagine to some extent how overwhelming a diagnosis must be for many people. In the case of my friend, dealing with it would require a total overhaul of their lifestyle, which is no mean feat for anybody. I just feel in some ways I'm watching them fall apart in front of me.
Thank you for replying....if there's any other info I can provide that would help you please let me know.

Thank you

x
 
Yours, and your friends, is a very difficult situation. I think there's not much you can do besides tell them that you love them regardless of them taking care or not taking care of their diabetes.
One of the problems with uncontrolled diabetes is that it makes you feel rubbish, which makes you not wanting to do anything about the situation (not unlike and often overlapping depression). I don't think there is much you can do, except let your friend know you're there and willing to help out with practical stuff and a shoulder should they want to try to change things. Don't forget to let them know you're there as well if they don't want to try to change things, it's a very unhappy feeling if you feel you are judged by your loved ones for things you feel guilty about already.
Big hug coming your way for the both of you! (and I love the gender-neutral adressing, wish people would speak about me that way )
 
Thank you so much Antje77, that's so kind of you! Also very useful to know that uncontrolled diabetes makes you feel rubbish like depression can.... this makes perfect sense but I never thought about it like that before. And making sure they know they're not judged for something they already feel guilty for...I kind of had this feeling but couldn't put it into words. I think this is what happened when my friend became defensive when I tried to speak to them about food the other day, it makes sense now.
It's so useful to have different perspectives and support on this, thank you so much
Big hugs back to you

xx
 
Sounds like you're a wonderful person to have as a friend
 
I was diagnosed in 1976, after a long period of losing weight, feeling thirsty, and generally awful, and being told by the doctor is was psychological, so at one level I was rather relieved to be diagnosed. So I'm not much help in this respect.

Though it did take me quite a few years to get round to looking after myself properly.

I think it depends in what way your friend needs to come to terms with it. I didn't like being told horror stories, in many ways that made me less willing to look after my diabetes, not more.

It so much depends on their personality. I wouldn't let anyone else take charge of my diabetes management, I absolutely do it all myself. No one else is allowed near it. I have known people who take the other route, my father developed insulin dependent diabetes later in life, and he always let my mother do most of the work.

But not wanting to talk about food, or care, with you, suggests someone who wants to do it themselves, not someone who wants someone else to do it. Perhaps not being able to do so is a negative thing for them. In which case persuading them that can do it, might the best way forward. But these things are complicated so it's just guessing.

Hopefully some other people can offer some advice.





T
 
@jim1234 , that's a difficult situation you've got there and I don't pretend to know the answer to it.

There might be some ways of dealing with it by being nice. Those might work, and I'll leave it to others to articulate what those methods might be.

As a devil's advocate, I'd think about nasty ways of dealing with it.

It's all very well him saying he's aware of complications, but has he bothered reading the complications sub-forum on this site? People who are actually going blind, getting kidney transplants, and regretting not bothering about control?

How about telling him about Eva Saxl? She was a T1 Jew, fled to China to escape the Nazis in WW2, because they were killing Jewish people, the Japanese invasion of China cut off insulin supplies. She didn't curl up and die. She and her husband Victor managed to set up a basic rough and ready lab in a basement, got sourced with water buffalo pancreata from a local butcher and made their own insulin. During a war.

If your friend doesn't do the nice line, go f*cking hard with him. Tell him he's a selfish, weak c*nt who Eva Saxl would slap round the head and tell him to get his act in order.

We've all got a responsibilty to look after ourselves in this difficult game. I object to some of my tax contribution each month being spent on the complications your ars*hole friend will develop because of not bothering to look after himself.

Shame him into looking after himself.
 
Hi @jim1234 I was Type 1 for 54 years and behaved as though I didn't have it for a large part of the first 20 years. I paid for that with retinopathy, nephropathy and Charcot foot. I must say that when I started to take things very seriously in late 1978, the rot slowed down and allowed me to soldier on till undergoing a kidney/pancreas transplant in 2013. I reckon you stand a very good chance of living a decent life and staving off all the horrors ifyou maintain a good blood glucose level on average. Obviously there can be all kinds of things to trip this up: Not regularly testing to spot how food, mood, germs, adrenaline, exercise, shock, and insulin can all push your sugar up without obvious reasons sometimes. It is hard to say but there are examples of Type 1s mentioned on the forum who have endured over 70 years without complications. As I mentioned above, I almost pretended it wasn't there for 20 years, just like your friend has for two. If he ignores it indefinitely, he will certainly face possibly even worse outcomes than I did. Amputation is horribly common because of diabetes in this country alone. The only reason I am not blind now is that a top class opthalmologist who lasered both my eyes in the late 1970s spoke to me as the following excerpt from my book Fifty Years of Malfunction relates:
During one of his consultations in my second year he asked me about my life. I told him that I was living in Kensal Rise; that I cycled into King’s College in the Strand every day; that I played squash; and that I drank moderately (I’m sure he didn’t fall for this). His response was that I should stop burn-ups on the Edgeware Road, that I should avoid squash, moderate my alcohol intake, and that I should shun aerobic exercise or anything that would make me red in the face. If I did not heed his words, I would be blind by the time I reached twenty-three.
“Thank you” I said. “Do you realise that in one sentence you have ruled out all the finer points of living?”
I am so grateful for this man's advice, which I religiously followed right the way till 2013. I doubt whether aerobic exercise would damage your friend at the moment, but he should certainly go to a diabetic clinic and turn his life round, before serious damage sets in. I hope this is of some help! Good luck
 
Well, I was diagnosed at 8 in 1970 and no one mentioned complications to me. Obviously by the time I was adult I'd worked a lot of them out (just why am I having eye tests again?) but it was only relatively recently that I realised that T1s do significantly often die of night time hypos.

But it is easy to feel that any complications are your own fault for just not being careful enough, and guilt is not a good way to run your life. Is your friend going to a diabetic clinic? It does sound like they need psychological help to deal with the issues. As regards not eating, are they into eating disorder territory? (Unfortunately eating disorders are quite common with T1s, possibly as a result of having to watch what they eat. ) Do they ever go to a diabetic clinic? This is really important, as things like eye tests stop complications with eyesight turning into blindness. Many many T1s go through periods of denial when they ignore their illness, most eventually turn the corner and take control.

Does your friend want you to take control of their illness? (You said a previous partner looked after it for them.) If so, tell them to make an appointment to go to a clinic as a first step.
 
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