Friends and family - help or hindrance?

[everydayupsanddowns]

I was pondering this recently. Friends, parents, partners and family can be a huge source of help and support when you are living with a long term condition.

It can be great to feel that other people have ‘got your back’ and are supporting you in practical and emotional ways.

But sometimes well meaning friends and family can get things either slightly wrong. Or worse still actively seem to undermine your best efforts...

How have your friends, family and significant others supported you brilliantly.

And has anyone ever made things harder for you either accidentally, unthinkingly, or deliberately.

No names, or nastiness... but I am just interested in everyone’s experiences... and thought it might be helpful for partners, spouses, and family members to hear positive stories and cautionary tales.

 

[Deleted member 25429]

My husband has been amazing, he knows from my mood what my sugar levels are doing . When I’m angry or frustrated he is there holding my hand . He does the food shopping and knows exactly what I will and won’t eat . He has also read extensively so that he knows as much as he can about the condition. My daughter ignores the condition but that is just her coping mechanism. The men I work with watch over me . I am so lucky x

 

[Robin]

My husband does his best to be supportive, though he’s not as quick to recognise if I'm hypo as my daughter is (Mum, do you need to test? as soon as she hears me trip over a word). However, there was the one time, now known to the family as 'The Barcelona Incident' or 'Rambling in Las Ramblas' when I had a massive drop really quickly after walking a long way in the heat, and I was so focused on not stopping to open my bag anywhere unsafe where a pickpocket could get behind me, that my husband had to grab me, get my back to some subway railings, and order me to treat and test NOW!

 

[Sprogladite]

For me personally, I can find my family somewhat irritating at times. They have the best of intentions, and are always happy to run downstairs and grab hypo treatments, or weigh carbs out with me, and other little things like that which make all the difference. BUT, for my parents in particular, it feels like their diabetes knowledge is "frozen" to when I was first diagnosed 25 years ago. I was put on mixed insulin initially, which as we all know doesn't have the flexibility that a basal/bolus regime does. They can't seem to get their heads around how these regimes are different and to be honest I've given up trying to teach them. It can be somewhat frustrating when you're having a hypo and being told you should have a jam sandwich - which would send me into the stratosphere - because this is what they were taught by the pediatric diabetes consultant when I was 7, then being dismissed when I refuse it and ask for a couple of jelly babies because I can't be trusted thanks to the hypo! Like I say though, it's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and when it comes down to it, the support they show in other, little ways is what counts 🙂

 

[trophywench]

Whilst I understand what your parents had to know absolutely when you were a child, Sprog - they aren't THAT flippin old now, are they? And must be reasonably intelligent to have jointly produced you AND ensured you reached adulthood!

Are you sure they don't do it deliberately just to wind their own Little Sprog up?

 

[Sprogladite]

Whilst I understand what your parents had to know absolutely when you were a child, Sprog - they aren't THAT flippin old now, are they? And must be reasonably intelligent to have jointly produced you AND ensured you reached adulthood!

Are you sure they don't do it deliberately just to wind their own Little Sprog up?

Wouldn't put it past them tbh! But no, they've never really understood the finer points once I moved onto basal bolus, even before I was on a pump. Now I'm so well controlled they don't feel the need to get into the super fine details as long as I'm on target which is fair enough (I mean, I am 31 lol). My son is much more up to date on his diabetes knowledge so in a crisis they would likely ask him for info if needed.

 

[trophywench]

LOL - my Dad might easily have done that left to his own devices and instincts but my mama always found making a drama out of a crisis came a lot easier …..

I was very glad/relieved I was married and we had our own house 20 miles away and mom had no transport of her own when I was diagnosed!

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

My Mum still worries (and blames herself). she can still spot a low though, or will sometimes ask if I ‘need to test‘

Mostly my friends and family are well meaning and supportive, but slightly lacking in the detail.

I‘m very thankful I haven’t experienced any of the horror stories you sometimes hear about.

They are a good bunch.

 

[trophywench]

My second husband's younger daughter's best mate for years from when they were both little, was T1. She was diagnosed aged 3. Pete thought it was a shame having to send her home either for meals sometimes or overnight when they'd all have liked a stopover so they discussed it with her parents and after that a vial of insulin lived in their fridge too with a packet of disposable syringes in a drawer. All fridges at that time had the shaped egg rack along the top of the door and insulin vials were usually kept there - hence I had to tell him nothing about stuff like that as he was already educated!

Anyway both being 50ish at the time, he always said and still does that having T1 automatically also turns everyone into a liar! Whaaat?

Yes - because whenever he sees or hears signs of me (or another close person with another T1) displaying hypo symptoms (he says my mouth sets itself in a very specific shape) and merely says 'Do you think you ought to test?' we ALL reply 'I'm not hypo!' quite vehemently - when 9x out of 10 - we jolly well are!

I've admitted defeat by now, and just jump to it and test cos the rotten so and so has been right on far too many occasions, to risk not doing it. It's personally deeply satisfying when he's wrong though!

My consultant absolutely roared with laughter when Pete told him this - he wasn't aware of it, never actually having spent that much time cheek by jowl with a T1, so understandable really.

 

[nonethewiser]

Wife supportive, been together 31 years.

She lets me just get on with things because that is the way I like it, rarely discuss diabetes with anyone outside appointments & forum.

 

[Oblivious]

I have a work colleague who tries to help/give advice but she reads every blog about fad diets and the latest miracle foods, she told me last week that if you cook a potato twice it will have no carbs in it. And that diabetics shouldn't eat food with or use sweeteners because they are 'concentrated sugar, that's why they are so sweet.'

 

[trophywench]

I'd just tell her that unless she starts getting her diabetes info from a reliable source, she'd do well to stop telling me such rubbish else I might have to punch her.

 

[Stoobey]

So difficult to respond to this as they have all been brilliant to a certain extent, but.... They don't understand diabetes, I've found some family members have been critical because I lost weight over a short period of time (because they care and it was extreme).

A common phrase, that I keep hearing, is "you've got to live", again, with the best interests at heart, but not understanding I can't have certain foods and I don't want them anymore.

I'll be brutally honest here, the people who tend to be a little bit negative to the lifestyle changes are those who probably should be making the changes themselves. But, people have been positive, I had a shock to the system which made me change, others want to change but haven't had that shock, so lack that motivation.

 

[Wirrallass]

I consider myself very *thankful & fortunate to have a caring family anyway ~ but both my daughters ~ their O/H and my three grandsons are very supportive & protective of me more particularly so since being dx in 2016.

If they're with me when I go shopping, they look at labels to see how many carbs there are in a specific product ~ but they wag their fingers at me if I choose to buy myself a 'treat'🙄 but they understand that I do need to treat myself now and then 😛 as a consolation 'prize' for keeping my numbers in check...you understand!

Good thread @everydayupsanddowns
WL
Edited *

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I often have to remind myself how little detail I know about any of my friends and family’s ailments and how confusing I find the intricate details, whenever I get surprised that friends I’ve known for years haven’t picked up Complete Diabetes Mastery Knowledge by some sort of osmosis of the universe.

I’ve had a few detailed diabetes conversations with quite close friends recently, and it has shown me that my T1 (and it’s day-today maintenance requirements) is very low on the radar of most people I know.

Having said that I’ve been living with it for the best part of 30 years and it still confuses the heck out of me... so I can’t really blame anyone else whose not having to do this stuff day-in day-out

 

[trophywench]

Well exactly Mike. Plus the likes of you, I and any number of folk on the forums we both inhabit all have a desire to educate themselves whereas as you also know, with some forum members you may as well bang your head on a wall cos it simply never gets through!

It is a bit like me trying to explain to my mother what possible use knowing how to recognise and solve a simultaneous equation was going to be to me for the rest of my life. I couldn't have done for the simple reason that it hasn't been - but it was 100% essential at that time in order to pass my Maths GCE!

It's only because D is for life we still remember things about it which we learned last century, cos we need to use it constantly. 'Use it or lose it!'

 

[Eddy Edson]

Annoying things:

- Being interrogated about why I don't want a biscuit. No it's not because of the sugar, it's because I don't eat frikkn biscuits.

- Being told I'm too scrawny. No I'm not; you're too fat.

But there's just a fundamental human thing: people don't like it when people change a lot.