A Non-T1Ds's Attempt to Live With T1D

Hi, I’m Matthew, Anne’s brother, guest blogger for this post! Anne has had T1D for about two years now, and last Friday she dared me to spend a week as a diabetic. Of course, I can’t really become 100% diabetic for a week due to all the details of the condition and the fact that my pancreas isn’t stupid.  However, I can test my blood sugar before meals and after I wake up and do carb counting, so that’s what I’m doing.

Note from Anne ~ T1D stands for type 1 diabetes. Basically, he is testing his blood sugar when he wakes up, every time he eats, and before he goes to bed at night. He is recording this information in one of my extra logbooks, and he is calculating the carbs for everything he eats. I am extremely proud of him, he has been taking it very seriously and has been quite diligent! :) This is a picture of my brothers and myself (Matthew being the older one):

To even it out a bit (between Anne and myself), I have a slightly harder job than Anne. She is much better than me at carb counting as she’s had two years of experience, and she has a CGM, whereas I have to finger poke for every time I want to test my BG (Blood Glucose).  A Continuous Glucose Monitor is a device on her body that connects to an app on her phone and tells her what her blood sugars are every five minutes.

Note from Anne ~ The reason he is finger-poking instead of using a Dexcom CGM is because I don’t have one that he can use, and this way he understands the struggles of a recently-diagnosed diabetic. For a more detailed explanation of what the Dexcom G5 CGM is, please click here to read my post that talks all about it.

I’m aware this is only a fraction of the work that is required by someone with this condition, so I’m not going to act like I know the exact struggles of a diabetic. But, for a couple of days at least, I know a portion of them, and if this is only a portion, I have great respect for anyone who lives with this.

Let’s take an example. I like Mac n’ Cheese, and I eat home-made. The issue with that is you must account for every single ingredient. Me being myself, I forgot I had to carb count until half way through making it (I eyeball the portions of ingredients, normally). Now you may ask, Matthew, how does one carb count for such a meal with no precise portions? My answer: With great difficulty, my dear friend!

Note from Anne ~ Matthew, you crack me up! For all you readers, he has a terrible memory, but he makes up for it with his raw sarcasm and wit. But back to the post:

It took twenty minutes to carb-count. This is because I had to account for the flour, the pasta, and the milk. This would have been easy had I remembered to measure how much I put in, but I didn’t. When I remembered I had to count, I had already been cooking for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of carb-counting later, I was back to actually cooking the thing, which took another twenty minutes. Why am I talking about this? Just two small parts of diabetes doubled the time it took to prepare my meal. Now, for all you other non-T1D’s out there, imagine implementing dosing, correction factors, and everything else that comes with diabetes. I wasn’t even dealing with highs and lows.

Another example: sugary drinks skyrocket your blood sugars. I’m doing my best to pretend I actually have diabetes, so I’m pretending if I eat something and don’t dose for it, then hypothetically I will go high.

Note from Anne ~ Didn’t I say he’s been taking it seriously?! Love you, Matthew!!

Last night at our cousin’s birthday party, I poured myself a drink of what I thought was Perrier water. After drinking a bit of it, I realized that it was, in fact, Sprite. There were a couple issues with this:

• I didn’t measure my drink because I thought it was Perrier (Perrier has no carbs in it)
• I didn’t know how much “Perrier” I drank before I realized it was Sprite
• I definitely drank enough to cause a change in BG values

Thankfully my cousin is quite good at eyeballing measurements (she cooks a lot) and was able to help me determine how much I had, to the best of our guessing abilities. However, not everyone has a cousin like mine, and she could have been wrong. I’ll never know since, as previously mentioned, I’m not actually dosing for anything, but if I had then I could have been sent extremely high or extremely low if the carb counting I did was on par or not.

Note from Anne ~ Shout-out to Catherine! It’s true, she is an extremely good cook. But I helped you with that, too, Matthew!! :(

Remember the trouble I had calculating the carbs in that Mac n’ Cheese? I realized that a T1 Diabetic probably has that problem at just about every restaurant on earth because most of them give you calorie counts at best! Sometimes you’ll get lucky if it’s a big-name chain and they care enough to actually provide the full nutrition values, including carbs. But a small restaurant doesn’t necessarily have any of that. In many of these smaller places, at best you’ll get the information at the side of the box, if they still have it.

Note from Anne ~ That is true, sadly. Going out to eat usually does require a lot of swagging carb counts on the part of a T1 Diabetic. If you want some more information on some restaurants that do have nutrition information in-store, click here to read my post that talks more about it.

The long and the short of it is that I’ve lived with part of this condition for four days now, and I already have a hard time imagining my life like this. A few tips for other non-T1Ds:

• Never question a diabetic’s hatred for math, or their math abilities! They do math more frequently than you do, unless you do math every time you eat. They have a right to not enjoy doing it and are, after having had the condition for a while, most likely very good at it.
• Respect people with T1D for making it through the day, as they have a very hard job.
• Try this challenge yourself! All you need is a finger poker, some test strips, a BG Meter, and a log book. You may also want a bag to carry this all around in as well. I’d also recommend having a real T1D handy in case you need to swag (guess the carbs) something as they will be much better at it than you will ever be, unless you yourself get diagnosed with T1D.
• Make a diploma for your pancreas saying it graduated from preschool, then get a real T1D to sign it.

I already said it, but extreme respect to all T1Ds. I have only had a taste of what your life is like and I respect and applaud you for doing this and more every single day of your life.

Thanks for reading this post of That Stupid Pancreas!

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Till next time, Type 1 Warriors!!