5 Things You Won’t Find in a Book

Elizabeth tagged me for this meme, and I’m actually pretty excited about it!  I think it has a lot of potential and look forward to watching the Wikibetes entry grow and grow.

Meme:
Five Most Important Pieces of Advice … You Won’t Find in a Book!

Rules:
Post five of the most helpful pieces of diabetes management advice on your blog.

Link to this Wikibetes entry where we will be tallying up all of the great advice.  You are welcome to add your advice directly.

Tag five bloggers by leaving a comment on their blog.

My Five:

1) Be Flexible.  Diabetes has taught me many things over the years.  I have a feeling I’ll be talking about at least five of them here, but this one tops the list.  Diabetes will deal you some very questionable hands some days.  It is important to know that on those days surviving the game is more important than winning the game.  Stay flexible, do the best you can with what you have.

2) Perfection is poison.  There are just too many variables involved to ever be able to perfectly manage diabetes.  It cannot be done.  If you stress out about not being able to perfectly manage diabetes you will live a miserable life (gosh, that sounds harsh.  Ok, I would be miserable trying to live that way…).

3) Stay on your toes.  Things change.  I noticed about five years ago that when my blood sugar is at (or crossing through) about 200 mg/dl, I feel low.  Is that the craziest thing ever?  It caused me so much trouble, not being able to trust symptoms that no longer mean what they used to mean.  I had to start testing more often, rather than just trusting my feeling and eating to treat the low (that wasn’t low).  Things change, and will change.  As soon as you think you have it figured out, something changes.  We have to remain open to change as we grow and live with diabetes.

4) Keep learning.  Not only about diabetes in general, but about YOUR diabetes.  We are all very different and unique and what works for me may not work for others.  You have to gather all of the information that is out there, sift through it to find the gems that you think may help you, try it, then decide if it is something that you can add to your diabetes toolbox or not.  If it doesn’t work, you are still better off knowing it is not for you!  I have lived most of my life with diabetes (28+ years now, diagnosed at the age of 5).  I am often amazed how after such a long time I am always still able to learn something new.  Then I wonder how the heck I survived so long without knowing it!  We live in an amazing age where not only clinical information is available at our fingertips, but also hundreds of real people, just like you and I, are sharing their diabetes stories with us.  There is much we can learn from the experiences of others.  Capture that and use it to better your situation!

5) Doing your best is all you can ask of yourself.

I am tagging:
G-Money
Molly & Dixie
– Jeff
Kerri
Sara

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Scott K. Johnson

Patient voice, speaker, writer, and advocate. Living life with diabetes and telling my story. All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the position of my employer.

Diagnosed in April of 1980, I recognize the incredible mental struggle of living with diabetes. Read more…