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Have you ever forgotten you're diabetic?

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This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
Amity Island

Amity Island

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
In all the years I've been diabetic, never once have I not remembered that I was diabetic. 'twas a few weeks ago, everything was going well, feeling good generally, levels good. On this one occasion, I didn't take my basal in the morning, not because I forgot to take my basal (I have done that before), but on this occasion it was simply because I forgot I was diabetic.

How strange....🙂
 
I have made an amazing discovery about that over the years ….. this forgetfulness seems to happen more frequently now I'm 68 than it ever did when I was 28, 38, 48 or 58.

Isn't that weird?

Just shows how much of a ruddy habit and how less 'significant' diabetes becomes, eventually.
 
trophywench said:
I have made an amazing discovery about that over the years ….. this forgetfulness seems to happen more frequently now I'm 68 than it ever did when I was 28, 38, 48 or 58.

Isn't that weird?

Just shows how much of a ruddy habit and how less 'significant' diabetes becomes, eventually.
Click to expand...
I wish I hadn't forgotten how to spell "forgotton"! lol
 
trophywench said:
I have made an amazing discovery about that over the years ….. this forgetfulness seems to happen more frequently now I'm 68 than it ever did when I was 28, 38, 48 or 58.

Isn't that weird?

Just shows how much of a ruddy habit and how less 'significant' diabetes becomes, eventually.
Click to expand...

Jenny, I think that morning I got up, I was thinking about when I was much younger, before I was diabetic. It seems a long time ago now, but there was a time when I wasn't diabetic.....
 
LOL - I have that distant memory too - but to be honest I don't think my life would have been much different without D other than the very obvious thing that you forgot! It's never actually stopped me doing a single thing I actually wanted to do.
 
Chance would be a fine thing, the everyday grind of bg monitoring, food calculations & insulin doses is a constant reminder that diabetes is always there. Easy to miss taking your insulin but that is just absent mindedness than anything else.

So the answer is no, despite everything still enjoy life to the full and treasure every moment here.
 
Nope. But I’ve forgotten to do various diabetes things because they are so automatic many times. And several times I’ve forgotten I have already done them, and then done them again!

Much easier now on a pump, so I don’t have to remember to do Basal insulin, and any boluses I do (or forget to do) are automatically recorded.
 
I sometimes forget. Like you say, a different feeling than forgetting your insulin etc. I wonder if it is because I've only been diagnosed for five years. Am passed the newness of constantly learning, but still have lived a lot longer without.
Conversely I remember a while ago a really interesting thread about whether when you dream you have diabetes. I couldn't remember ever having dreamed anything about diabetes at the time, but more recently I have noticed it creeping in.
 
I’m bad at remembering to test and inject in advance of meals where I'm doing last minute cooking and serving up to the whole family. Sometimes it’s because it flits through my mind constantly, but I never get the chance to break off and do it, and I get to the dining room with my kit and do it after I've sat down to eat. But I have sat down at the table not having given it a thought, and announced to the family, Oops, I just forgot I was diabetic, and got up to go and retrieve my kit from the kitchen.
 
Diabetes just is. It’s an integral part of life, like eating, breathing, and pooing. I don’t forget I have diabetes because of that, it’s built in.

In my dreams, I can always walk, but I always have diabetes. That’s because not being able to is not yet built in.
 
I haven't had a dream I remembered for ages - well over a decade anyway. Mine were never about anything normal - although people and places I knew would be in them sometimes - hence they didn't include anything hardly mundane. I'd never eg have a wash, have my hair cut or eat etc, as far as I recall.
 
We can certainly all dream; that one day we can forget we have diabetes, because one day there will be a cure!
How amazing would that be! To wake up one morning and not have diabetes anymore....
There's been some info on the JDRF recently about them really pushing to find a cure. Also I remember someone saying they'd discovered a potential cure by using a t.b? vaccine? Not heard anything about that since. I think they said that the pancreas is actually still capable of producing insulin (the pancreas is actually still functioning properly), but there is something constantly attacking it preventing it from doing so.

https://jdrf.org.uk/
 

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I haven't forgotten I'm diabetic, every morning when I open my eyes I'm blind in one eye and partially sighted in the other thanks to the ravages of proliferative retinopthy, my complications slap me in the face and make it impossible for me to forget.

I have forgotten to do diabetes related things such as change my cannula, charge my meter or I've completely forgotten in what order to change my cannula after doing it by rote for so long. :confused:
 
No, never. Like others I've forgotten if I've given doses etc but never forgotten I've got it. It's always there. Hasn't stopped me doing anything and I've made the best of it but getting T1 has to be the worst thing to happen to me. Not bitter about it though, well only sometimes. 😉:D
 
Matt Cycle said:
No, never. Like others I've forgotten if I've given doses etc but never forgotten I've got it. It's always there. Hasn't stopped me doing anything and I've made the best of it but getting T1 has to be the worst thing to happen to me. Not bitter about it though, well only sometimes. 😉:D
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Hi Matt, I really applaud you for your cycling and exercise generally, that is an amazing achievement. It's something i'd love to have a go at but I find with work and life, It would take up too much time and effort playing around with doses, insulins, experimentation. Tried it once, everything went pear shaped and there isn't much help from the hospital in terms of exercise. They just say everyone's different and they cant really help that much. I just can't fathom out what you need to do to exercise? The time I tried it, I ended up reducing my basal by about 50% and my boluses by 50% also. Then there was a knock on with doses on the following days I didn't exercise until my metabolism settled down again. For me it would have to be something you do everyday or not at all. It was really hard work, although perhaps with the libre it might be more do-able. b.t.w I do cycle to work, but I have an electric assisted bike, which allows a bit of exercise (10 miles a day) without impacting my doses, it also saves on parking, fuel and delays in traffic.
 
Diabetes clinics might have us exercising 'energetically' every other day or preferably every 3rd since it takes 48-ish hours to get the effect of it out of our system.

OTOH surely 'little and often' is a better way to proceed?

In any event - 'some' is always going to be preferable to 'none' !
 
I could no more exercise energetically than fly, so I suppose I’m in deep effluent:D
 
Amity Island said:
Hi Matt, I really applaud you for your cycling and exercise generally, that is an amazing achievement. It's something i'd love to have a go at but I find with work and life, It would take up too much time and effort playing around with doses, insulins, experimentation. Tried it once, everything went pear shaped and there isn't much help from the hospital in terms of exercise. They just say everyone's different and they cant really help that much. I just can't fathom out what you need to do to exercise? The time I tried it, I ended up reducing my basal by about 50% and my boluses by 50% also. Then there was a knock on with doses on the following days I didn't exercise until my metabolism settled down again. For me it would have to be something you do everyday or not at all. It was really hard work, although perhaps with the libre it might be more do-able. b.t.w I do cycle to work, but I have an electric assisted bike, which allows a bit of exercise (10 miles a day) without impacting my doses, it also saves on parking, fuel and delays in traffic.
Click to expand...

The Libre will certainly help you if you want to give it another go. Although I do quite a bit of walking during the week I'm more of a weekend warrior on the bike. On MDI when cycling I would often not alter any doses and just deal with any lows when they happened. It helped when I split my Levemir doses as I could then reduce the morning and evening doses. I never altered my bolus doses. Still lots of guesswork and luck involved. To me if you're a classic T1 and you've got no insulin production at all then when exercising there are too many other variables affecting blood glucose levels to simply say reduce it by x and all will be fine. Moving on to the pump has helped with my control in general but on the bike and afterwards I can fiddle about with temporary basals. However, speaking to the TNN riders on the Pedal for 7 last year most of them use MDI and don't mess with doses too much but the crucial thing for them was CGM. As long as they could see what their blood glucose was doing continuously and deal with it before something happened (either eat something or occasionally insulin) then to them that was the most important thing.
 
I've never forgotten, REALLY, but, I have gone through 2 instances in the past when I've been in denial & not been taking my meds & injections properly! Both times I was going through, shall we say, adjustments to my life.

The first time after the family restaurant was sold & after working 45 to 50 hours a week from age 16 to 39 I was retired. I didn't realise HOW much structure in my life was lost when I wasn't working anymore! I realised very recently, the other week, when talking to my diabetic taxi driver friend that I can't do the restaurant business anymore & waitressing in particular: neuropathy means that I can't carry stacks of hot plates; I'd be dropping them!😱

The second time was when mum got her, out of the blue, sudden cancer diagnosis & died 6 weeks later!:(😱:confused: BUT, that shock, having gone through it once, lessened the shock of my sister's recent passing from cancer as well. I had higher BS's than I'd like for a while but, I didn't go into denial & let the diabetes management go down the toilet!🙂
 
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