Courtesy of the “Wayback Machine“, I bring you the early entries I made in my online diabetes journal.  This was back before Blogger made things easy, and I had to write the entries in HTML.  The journal is no longer available, but thanks to the wonderful tools available on the internet, I was able to find much of my old stuff.  I’d like to share one of the old entries with you.

I have very recently communicated with Susan, and she is no longer practicing, but may open up again sometime in the future.  If she does, and if I can afford it, I would absolutely do it again.

28 May 2003

It’s about 4:30pm on Wednesday. I just had a low blood sugar (56) while I was out for my lunchtime walk. This is the first time in nearly 2 days that my blood sugar has been under 230. I have been fighting highs since early yesterday morning. Going through the process of troubleshooting the pump, checking my insulin, etc. It takes time to figure out what the heck is going on.

When I woke up this morning my pinky finger on my left hand felt like it was asleep – like I slept on it wrong or something. I didn’t think much of it until about 3 or 4 hours later, when I was still feeling the uncomfortable tingling. It didn’t go away totally until I was out on my walk at lunchtime, and my blood sugar had gone back down.

I wonder if it was symptoms of neuropathy? After being so high for so long, is it possible that it “flared up” or something?

So, after being tired for 2 days straight, going through the ritual of troubleshooting the causes of the highs, and finally getting by blood sugar back down – I was extremely tired from the low. I have noticed lately that after a low blood sugar, I will get very tired. As if the reaction has really taken a toll on me physically.

So, with a little bit of luck, I’ll be back on track shortly.

I had a very interesting night last night, in the midst of all my blood sugar problems. A woman by the name of Susan Shaw contacted be, prompted by my profile entry on the insulin-pumpers.org mailing list. She does hypnotherapy sessions, specifically dealing with diabetes.

She said she was touched by my profile, which mentioned my battle with depression and motivation, and wanted to offer a free session.

While not really sure what to think about “hypnotherapy”, I was excited to try it. I mentioned it to my wife, and she had some significant problems with the thought of “hypnotherapy”. I’m not really sure what her problems were exactly, and I’m not sure if she knew exactly either. Just the fact that it is not a traditional
thing bothered her quite a bit.

While I could appreciate her concerns (heck, I don’t know anything about “hypnotherapy” either…), I was at a point where I was ready to try something outside of the traditional medicines and therapy. I talked with her about how I felt, and that I was frustrated with the doctors and their “teams”. I explained that I did not want to live like this forever – battling depression and motivational issues. She agreed to me trying it, which was very important to me. I would not have done it if my wife was not completely on board with the idea.

So, I went ahead and tried it, and was very pleased. I learned a lot about myself, and my fight with diabetes, and how it impacts me emotionally. I will go into more detail at a later time, and hopefully explain my experience.

Susan Shaw is a wonderful facilitator, and was very helpful for me. We were able to do this session over the phone, which I think opens up avenues for many people to be helped by her. Her website is at http://www.susan-shaw.com/(website no longer active), and it gives some general information about what her therapy is all about. She tells me her site is very rough, and that she will be adding much more information to it in the near future.

More to come…