Conversation Maps

Yesterday I had a meeting in the hospital where I go for my diabetes treatment. The intention was to meet up with other Type 1 diabetics and discuss D. Our diabetes nurse was the moderator. It was a small group, but it was interesting and instructive. There were two couples (both men had diabetes), two young women (one got diagnosed with D after her pancreas was removed surgically - she happens to be my sister-in-law) and a man, who got diagnosed a quarter of a decade ago.
Every one of us had a story to tell. How they were diagnosed, how they handled it, how their partner reacts to their diabetes. Every person is different and every one of us deals with diabetes in a different manner. There is no right or wrong. There are guide lines, but no rules. After all, it's our diabetes and we know how our body reacts to different types of food and situations. But in the end, we all have the same condition called Diabetes and we understand each other. We know why we have mood swings if our sugars are low or high. We know when to have goodies or not. We know about D and D is always with us. So you'd better come to terms with D, since he's going to be our longtime partner..

I hope there will be more Conversation Maps meetings in the future. It's good to join a support group of some kind. I'm very happy with our diabetesforum but this group might be very interesting as well, because there's our diabetes educator to fill us in where we miss out. So thanks nurse, for being there and teaching us whatever we need to know.

Did you know that just 1% of our pancreas is responsible for the production of insulin??? Considering that a pancreas is approximately 12-15 cm large, that 1% is just nothing! But yet, the consequences are huge..