Newbie!

[thor2013]

Hello,

New to the site 🙂 I don't have diabetes, but my friend does. He's 26. He is absolutely useless at controlling his blood sugars and he keeps having hypo's. He doesn't take his diabetes seriously at all. Yesterday whilst working he had another fit and smashed his head open.
People have spoken to him, tried to talk some sense into him, but nothing is getting through to him. Is there any scare tactics I can use as he really needs a kick up the a***.

Katie

 

[Northerner]

Hi Katie, welcome to the forum. I moved your post to its own thread so that it wouldn't get lost in the other one 🙂

Sorry to hear about your friend. The thing is, it is far easier to spend the few minutes a day that you need take care of your diabetes than to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. As your friend has found, it's causing him loads of problems that he just wouldn't have to deal with, so really there's no logic to acting as he does. He's also storing up a lot of potential future problems: poor control of your diabetes can lead to some very serious problems - kidney failure, blindness, amputations are the main things that people tend to hear about, and these are all pretty terrifying in themselves, but there are also things like peripheral and autonomic neuropathy, heart disease, sexual dysfunction and deafness. Poor control of diabetes can affect every single organ in your body and unless he gets to grips with things and accepts he needs to start looking after himself some or all of these things may be not too far into his future.

The main problem, of course, is that he has to want to do it himself - no amount of scare stories will work without that, since he will just resent people telling him how to live his life. He needs to step up and take responsibility and realise how much his behaviour is worrying and upsetting his friends and family. Talking to his nurse or doctor may help set him on track

 

[HOBIE]

Hi Katie, well done for caring about your friend ! You are right he does need a kick but being T1 is very hard at times & if he is working hard or its a hot day things alter. Is it the same time of day when he is hypoing ? There are so many things that can cause hypos. Is he worried about something ? Good luck sorting & may be print this for him ? 🙂

 

[KookyCat]

Hello,

New to the site 🙂 I don't have diabetes, but my friend does. He's 26. He is absolutely useless at controlling his blood sugars and he keeps having hypo's. He doesn't take his diabetes seriously at all. Yesterday whilst working he had another fit and smashed his head open.
People have spoken to him, tried to talk some sense into him, but nothing is getting through to him. Is there any scare tactics I can use as he really needs a kick up the a***.

Katie

Hi Katie

Is it possible that he's already scared and that's why he's not dealing with it? Now I'm going to be slightly sexist so sorry to all the men, but is he taking the bloke road, you know the one that starts with ignoring it, circles around hoping it will go away, and terminates at A&E (sorry chaps I know not every chap does this)? If he is on that path I wouldn't talk about future consequences (at 26 we're all invincible and have lots of time before any of those things happen), I'd concentrate on how much better he'd feel right now if his sugar was more level and controlled. I'm dead straightforward so I'd actually tell him I was concerned, wanted to help him feel better and didn't want to be worrying about him all the time, but ultimately if he doesn't want to you won't be able to force him. If he's a bloke road kind of chap giving him time to chew over it might work, because underneath it he wants support and doesn't want to be scared, he just doesn't know how to deal with it. If he just doesn't want to do it, there's not a great deal you can do. Good luck 🙂. Incidentally I'm not a bloke but I do have some bloke road traits!