Uncategorized

Dear Diabetes,

I have been traveling for the past 2 weeks and everywhere I go, there you are! Almost everyday there is a sign of you and I take that as a reminder to keep me in check.

I just don’t know why I keep on encountering people who insist on telling me horror stories of diabetes? I know you have been unkind to many but I decided I will make friends with you and that is the deal between us.

One of your wonderful signs of you, is that you make me physically tired. Whether blood sugar goes a bit higher or lower than normal, I feel it in a form of fatigue and I have learned that is a sign that it is time to rest. How cool is that? Before meeting you, I used to go on and on and now, I pause, take rest and begin again.

Just like now…I am too tried after 2 intensive days of attending a conference for my work and you are giving me hint to go and rest…

More next week,,,,

I don’t know how different people are when it comes to limitations and freedom of choice, but I am quite big on this. I don’t like limitations imposed on me by an external factor. This means my freedom is being taken away from me and I “HAVE TO” do things because….

I don’t want anyone or any”thing” forcing me to change something in my life. Sounds awful I know, but it was my truth then.

Up until that moment. Problems showed up in my life and I solved them and removed them from my life.

Actually when any challenge showed up I normally distracted myself with something that keeps my mind off the challenge. I always excelled in that distraction and took pride in it and by being consumed with all that, the challenge lost its power or at least this is what I made myself believe.

So here I am with type LADA diabetes and for the first time in my life there is nothing I can distract myself with. Nothing…

This time I am facing it right into the eye and have to stare there and understand it and make my peace with it. Peace? No way…I was not even slightly close to that point.

So what happened is that when I came home and everything seemed dark.

As if there was a layer of darkness over everything. I was rubbing my eyes to see clearly and yet it was dark. Everything felt dull, smelt rotten and I entered the tunnel of the unknown which I have actively been avoiding.

I felt I could not see, predict or feel anything. I became numb and stayed hiding in the tunnel. Inside the tunnel was damp, dark and lonely. It was so lonely as if the whole world doesn’t exist and as if there was no way out and at that moment I was not so sure if I wanted a way out. I wanted to undo everything, to remove it and more….

But then something happened. Little by little I got used to the tunnel. I started getting curious about the darkness and I started exploring it.

You know the saying “there is light at the end of the tunnel”? I was focusing so much at the end of the tunnel that I got tired. It was exhausting. So I surrendered and stayed in the deep, cold dark.

Have you been in a dark place when at first you can’t see anything and as the time passes, you start seeing?

So this is what happened when I let go of looking at the end of the tunnel.

I learned there is light inside the tunnel.

I started exploring inside the tunnel. This was looking deep down inside of me. Looking at the sadness and helplessness and started embracing my true feelings. It can sound so touchy feely I know but that was THE ONLY WAY…

And let me tell you that it is liberating.

After days of staying in the house, looking inward and BEING with what was, one morning I woke up and heard a Myna bird singing behind my window. The ray of sunshine came on my face and something shifted inside my gut. Something moved in me.

I sat on my bed and said to myself: if after all the trainings and self developments and the beautiful deep work that I have done related to my work, if after having all those tools , there is one person who can manage this situation, it is ME.

And at that very moment, my new life began.

And this concludes my story.

So the blogs to follow, will be about my life after this point.

Dear diabetes you might want about the day I got the test results.

…I thought the past 2 weeks of strict diet had prepared me for this. I was wrong. With all my strong intuition, I wished that I’d go to doctor and hear that test results are negative and there is no diabetes in my body.

Going through the strict diet, I was telling myself (actually promising myself) that I will continue this diet and lead a healthy life and never ever take my diet and my health for granted again.

I imagined I get away with this and this would be my turning point and the wake up call.

Universe had something else in store for me it seems.

The test said that I have type 1 Latent Autoimmune Diabetes for Adults also known as LADA.

My doctor mentioned since I have well managed my diet in the past 2 weeks and my blood sugar is in the range of 120s, I can continue on the pills and no need for insulin. A bit of a hope, but the whole thing was so traumatic that I could hardly see a ray of light in all this.

The he continued saying if I “manage” the diabetes well, I can live a long life like anyone else and there is no need to worry. He then gave me the stats of people having diabetes around the world and told me this is one of the most common conditions – I refuse to call it a disease!- and it is not a very big deal.

Before I start on this subject I must say that I know all doctors are not the same and I am not trying to generalize here. Yet I have seen this experience being repeated by good number of doctors around the world and so I am addressing it.

Are doctors aware of the impact of what they say on their patients?

Do these doctors even see the human side of their business? Does the repetition take away their empathy? Or is it that science and facts and figures makes them forget that a human being is sitting in front of them and not a robot.

I have to say that I am a coach. People talk to me about their pain every day and it never gets old and I never loose my sense of caring in non-attached way.

I know one of my good coach friends has developed a program to help the medical doctors develop this capability. Doctors break bad news to their patient day in and day out. They must now how to handle people’s emotions and how to honor them without being attached.

So I am sitting in my doctor’s clinic once again and have my eyes full of tears and before I know it, the session comes to an end. I go out, pay for the visit and take my car and drive home. But this is not me driving, this is my ghost driving home. I am so glad I made it home safely. Later I thought I should’ve called someone to come and pick me up, but it didn’t even occur to me because I always do everything myself and I am not even used to asking for help in cases like this.

I arrive home to face the reality: Me who always talks about choices, was left with no choice but to start a new life and all I could think of was that I have to continue the diet …for the rest of my life. Of course there is more to it but this is what went on my mind at that moment. So wait, how is that even possible? How could one live without sugar and carb till end of life? How can I live with this huge deprivation till end of my life? What am I going to eat?

On those days I used the word deprivation quite a lot and . I also used many other words and phrases such as “why me?” .As I progressed, I learned that everything I say and every word I use makes a difference. So I am more conscious now.

To be continued…