Newbie with Spouse Support Question
Hello All,
I am new to the family, and while of course I am not excited about the reason I am a part of the family, I am excited about all of the support and friendship that seems to define tudiabetes. First, a little about myself. I am 45 and learned from my Primary on August 9th that I have diabetes. My A1c was 13.9 and my fasting BG on the day he checked was 317. He put me on 20 units of Lantus, told me to check my fasting BG everyday, eat 2200 calories a day as he did not want me to loose anymore weight (I had lost 30 lbs over the previous 18 months) and that he would see me in a month. A nurse came into give me instructions on how to check my blood and how to use the Lantus pen. The nurse told me that I was a Type 2 diabetic.
I did not like the idea of only relying on Lantus to bring my numbers down, when I knew I needed to adjust my diet and excercise regime. I made an appointment with an Endo, which I goto next week. In addition to adjusting my diet and excercise, I have also been checking my bg before meals and 1 and 2 hours after. This week, my morning fasting number has been consistently in the low 90s. My numbers during the day are usually 110 -130, with at least one spike between 160 - 190 (still learning the effects of various foods on me).
From an emotional standpoint, I have not gone through the stages of emotions that I have read about on every site for the newly diagnosed. Welcome to my new life - it is what it is. However, my wife has been going through every stage - anger, depression, sadness, etc. She had gestional diabetes with our fourth child, a couple of years ago and really struggled emotionally through that as well. She did educate herself somewhat then, so she is not totally clueless about diabetes. She has helped tremendously in adjusting our meals and excercising with me (usually a 30 minute walk after dinner together). She is completely stressed out by our new life and feels as if we will never be normal again. How can I help her through this? She has gotten physically sick several times over the past two weeks, including today. When you feel that you are handling your situation well emotionally (at least in your opinion) how do you help your spouse/significant other who is not?
Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for the responses!
Kenny
I am new to the family, and while of course I am not excited about the reason I am a part of the family, I am excited about all of the support and friendship that seems to define tudiabetes. First, a little about myself. I am 45 and learned from my Primary on August 9th that I have diabetes. My A1c was 13.9 and my fasting BG on the day he checked was 317. He put me on 20 units of Lantus, told me to check my fasting BG everyday, eat 2200 calories a day as he did not want me to loose anymore weight (I had lost 30 lbs over the previous 18 months) and that he would see me in a month. A nurse came into give me instructions on how to check my blood and how to use the Lantus pen. The nurse told me that I was a Type 2 diabetic.
I did not like the idea of only relying on Lantus to bring my numbers down, when I knew I needed to adjust my diet and excercise regime. I made an appointment with an Endo, which I goto next week. In addition to adjusting my diet and excercise, I have also been checking my bg before meals and 1 and 2 hours after. This week, my morning fasting number has been consistently in the low 90s. My numbers during the day are usually 110 -130, with at least one spike between 160 - 190 (still learning the effects of various foods on me).
From an emotional standpoint, I have not gone through the stages of emotions that I have read about on every site for the newly diagnosed. Welcome to my new life - it is what it is. However, my wife has been going through every stage - anger, depression, sadness, etc. She had gestional diabetes with our fourth child, a couple of years ago and really struggled emotionally through that as well. She did educate herself somewhat then, so she is not totally clueless about diabetes. She has helped tremendously in adjusting our meals and excercising with me (usually a 30 minute walk after dinner together). She is completely stressed out by our new life and feels as if we will never be normal again. How can I help her through this? She has gotten physically sick several times over the past two weeks, including today. When you feel that you are handling your situation well emotionally (at least in your opinion) how do you help your spouse/significant other who is not?
Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for the responses!
Kenny
Tags: emotions, new, newbie, spouse support
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by acidrock23 on -
Don't apologize for long posts! It sounds like your spouse is really helpful, adjusting food and exercise is a big change for a lot of people in our cohort (I'm 43!) and for her to do that with you is great!!
I don't get that bummed out or depressed most of the time, I sort of try to distract myself with exercise, books, music and beer. I have benefitted *a lot* from changing my life around to exercise more (story available here if you are curious...). Getting healthy has been great but some of it is also the endorphin buzz from going running (and I started walking, in like 2006 or so but the buzz is there too...) and feeling really good about doing what I can. I could get run over tomorrow and, while it would be a drag, I feel like I have improved my quality of life by getting going on stuff, eating more consciously (although this is still a *huge* problem for me, as I am a potato chip ***ADDICT***...) and pushing myself to exercise regularly. Even without diabetes you are probably a lot better off adopting habits that are good for you.
re my spouse, MrsAcidRock has been very supportive and encouraging as well, although I am not very successful at getting her to go running/ biking with me. I do most of the cooking as her commute is longer so that works out ok as well. She doesn't seemed to get bummed about my health too much. Maybe it would help if you just whipped up dinner that is good for you instead of having her fretting about making something healthy? I'm T1 so I sort of "cheat" by just taking more drugs when I want to pig out but sometimes it drives me a bit batty when people are like "can you eat this? Should you be eating that?,", etc.
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Permalink Reply by BadMoonT2 on -
Long posts are good, how else to explain your situation. You are doing great that's an awesome turnaround in a short period. I too never went through the stages of grief post diagnosis, I spent 6 days in the hospital on diagnosis, and was told I might have heart failure(I didn't), so the fact that it was only diabetes was almost a relief. Like you I decided to just do what I had to do to deal with my new reality.
Perhaps you need to let your wife work through the stages of grief, after all your life has changed irrevocably. I suspect your good attitude will rub off over time. The evening walk could turn into a positive, it's good for everyone, diabetes or not, and its an opportunity to spend time together. Adjusting your diet generally means eliminating problem foods for a T2. Instead of thinking about the foods you cannot eat, you could just as well explore all the wonderful ingredients and recipes you can eat. There are tons of great low carb sites on the web and there are several excellent low carb recipe groups here on TuD. Another great source for recipes here is the Bernstein Group although it's not a recipe group per say there are several great cooks there who share their favorite recipe's from time to time, I've found several favorites there.
Finally, perhaps try to involve her in tuD. This site is full of people who are successfully dealing with diabetes and are leading full and happy lives.
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Permalink Reply by Melitta on
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Hi Kenny: Reading your post, I can't help but think that maybe you do not have Type 2 diabetes, but have LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, or slow onset Type 1 diabetes in adults). Manny Hernandez, the founder of TuDiabetes, has LADA, and he put together this LADA post. Read it if you can and see if it might be "you". And consider asking the endo next week.
I apologize, but I don't have much in the way of advice for your wife. I can say that a new diabetes diagnosis is a huge emotional shock, and grieving a new diagnosis takes time.
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Permalink Reply by MegaMinxX on -
Have you asked her specifically what is so stressful ? Is it the daily changes, or could it be uncertainty of future complications or other fears ? Anyone that listens to TV might get the unrealistic fear that diabetes means a life of doom. That may be true for uncontrolled diabetics, but you're not on that path !
BTW, does anyone with 4 kids ever have a 'normal' life ?? I would assume there were 'adjustments' to what 'normal' was with each additional child, and every year as they get older. Maybe she could think of the changes due to your diabetes is similar to adjustments to your children's needs.
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Permalink Reply by Baby Tee on -
Welcome to our quirky family Kenny. I'll give a longish response to your longish question.
Have you asked your wife what the most stressful parts of this are for her?
The first things that pop into my mind are:
1. When she was diabetic, she had the crazy hormones floating around in her body that makes everything more stressful, and the thought that your negligence when you are pregnant could result in hurting a fetus can be really stressful for some with gestational diabetes. Perhaps she associates diabetes with that frustration.
2. They say it is common for people with gestational D to eventually become type 2 later. Perhaps this was a slap in the face to her of what could be in her future.
If any of those things are the problem, she may not realize what the problem is. Not knowing why she is so upset could also be adding to the frustration.
Maybe you guys could sit down one night a week and discuss the meal plans for the following week. Perhaps not knowing what the next meal is going to be is stressful for her. I recently switched to a very low carb diet and I get really really frustrated trying to figure out what to have at my next meal.
Try something like following for dinner:
Shake N Bake chicken and cauliflower mock mashed potatoes (one bag of frozen cauliflower, cook it in the microwave, let it cool slightly, then whip it in a food processor with 2 or 3 light laughing cow soft cheeze wedges.) I know it's all white / beige, but it is easy for one night a week. Look at the carbs on the package to make sure you don't eat too many. Then, if you can have the carbs, have some strawberries and maybe whipped cream. Strawberries are pretty low carb for fruit.
I don't know, because I don't know her, but just a couple of possibilities. There is a really great book out there you should consider buying, if you can afford it, It is called "Think Like a Pancreas" by Gary Scheiner. This talks about the ins and outs of being diabetic. You can check the book out from my local library, but I like owning a copy.
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Permalink Reply by Pauly on -
Hi Kenny, your in the vortex of a new diagnosis. It can be overwhelming and for sure a life changer. Scour TU and other sites and learn as much as you can about the condition. Education on your part is one of the most important things you can do right now. TU is a great site with many great threads on all types of diabetes.
As Melitta mentioned make sure you are typed correctly and don't just assume you are a Type 2 because a nurse said so. You have to be your own advocate and may need additional tests to ensure your blood sugars are under control and you are getting the right treatment.
Good Luck
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Permalink Reply by MyBustedPancreas on -
I don't know what to say about your spouse's situation, other than to just give it time. Once she sees that this "new" life isn't so horrible, she will probably come around. Yes, D is an adjustment, and it takes time for people to get used to, but plenty of us are living with D, and plenty of us have spouses who live with D as a "type 3."
Something else, though - are you sure you're T2? I would highly recommend that you encourage your endo to order you a c-peptide test and antibody test. Based on your description, it sounds like you're LADA (slow developing form of type 1 in adults).
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Hi Kenny: The antibody testing that Pauly and MyBustedPancreas refer to is glutamic acid decarboxylase antibodies (GADA), islet cell antibodies (ICA), and insulinoma-associated (IA-2) autoantibodies. Antibody testing is the gold-standard test for Type 1 diabetes/LADA. The c-peptide test is also useful but not definitive. If a person is antibody positive, he/she has Type 1 autoimmune diabetes. The endo can order these tests for you.
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Permalink Reply by Stemwinder on -
Hi Kenny, It's good that you have accepted your new reality and are learning to deal with it. That's the first and the hardest step for most of us.
It sound like your wife is having a little more trouble with it than you are. My impression is that she is a very loving an caring person that sees someone she loves being threatened. Our society today is so alarmest. The national media makes every mole hill sound like a mountian. Sure there are downsides to D but to hear the media and every medical reseacher doomsayer talk all diabetics will die young of all sorts of contitions related to or affected by diabetes. The risks are elevated but that does not mean they will happen especially if we take extra care of our selves. I'm sure that all this negative chatter has helped fuel her fears. I think that after sometime she will realizes the the sky is not falling.
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Permalink Reply by Elikat on
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Thanks to all of you for your replies. Unfortunately, I beleive you are all correct when you say that it will take some time for her to adjust. I was just hoping that there was a magic pill!
Melitta, I did follow the link you provided plus read through some of the blog posts regarding LADA. I have been questioning my diagnosis from the beginning as a type 2. I may be, but I could not figure out how he would know just from my A1C and fasting BG. When I visit the Endo tomorrow requesting a C-Pep and antibody tests will be on the top of my list. While I do not hit all five of the questions on Manny's LADA checklist, I do hit at least 2 possibly as many as 4. Thanks for the info.
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Permalink Reply by Gerri on -
I often feel that diabetes is harder on my husband than it is on me. (T1 diagnosed at 53, almost 3.5 years ago.) He worries, he frets, he checks on me constantly. To be honest, it drives me crazy to be treated differently. I'm a very independent person & resent being checked on. I've told him this, to no avail. Afraid there's no magic solution. People adjust to the new reality at their own pace.
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Permalink Reply by Theresa on -
It is wonderful that you are accepting your diagnosis so well. My only thoughts on your wife's struggle is that she is hurting because she can't fix someone she loves. My son was diagnosed May 3, 2008 and knowing that I can not fix this for him is just heartbreaking to this day. Of course, I do every thing that I can for him including teaching him what is important so that he can manage his diabetes on his own when the time comes. It doesn't have to be horrible but it certainly is life changing. I think that the more you accept it and just keep living life, only know with diabetes in mind, is the best. Good luck with your official diagnosis.
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