I've said before, that to get someone to truly understand, you have to make them see. You have to let them see what it is like to be you. And I let my english teacher in on it more than I'd ever thought I would at the start of the year the other day.
I was late to lesson, and low, very low. I (stupidly, but it happens) didn't have any hypo treatment on me, and my speech was slurred so I sounded like I was drunk. My teacher looked quite shocked when I walked in, I just slurred "sugar" at her, at which she seemed a bit ruffled as she didn't have any. She said she would go and see what they had in the staffroom, and what happened next has to be the most interesting set of things to help a hypo I have ever done. A friend of mine had a mouthful of a cup of tea left (which had sugar in it) and half a chocolate biscuit which he gave to me while my teacher was out looking for something. Then, she came back with a tub of nutella and a spoon, and told me to eat. Now I love nutella, so I wasn't complaining, but it was funny eating nutella like a yogurt. She asked me if sugar would be better, I said probably, so leaving me with the tub of nutella she went, and came back with a cup of raw sugar and a spoon, which I began to eat and felt better for, my speech at any rate returned to normal.
Things settled after this excitement, and she started to talk to the class again, I got my BM out and tested and it makes a noise which diverted her attention away from what she was doing and towards me. She asked what she would be if she tested it, I told her our normal averages and asked her if she wanted to test hers. She said yes (though this took a while because she was very nervous about it and kept nervously asking me questions), eventually she managed it and ended up with a blood sugar of 6.7, which I told her was fine (anything between 4 and 7). I explained to her why a person without diabetes goes lower after they eat and higher if they haven't eaten for a while ect. Then when we'd all settled down to work, she looked on the internet, the trouble was (and I told her not to do this) she looked on an American site, now in America a blood sugar reading of 6.7 should mean that you are well and truly in a coma, and that's exactly what she read, and I looked as her face slowly drained of colour and she told me what she was reading. I think she was reassured when I started to laugh and explained things to her. From that, some of my friends said they wanted testing aswell, so we spent a lesson testing blood sugars and discussing how a diabetics blood sugars differ from a person without diabetes.
This, was a really good way of letting them into a little bit of how it feels to be a diabetic. Some of them took ages to do a blood sugar, saying they were scared it was going to hurt (my reassurance was that they didn't HAVE to do it, and when I first had to do it I was 4 years old and it didn't hurt me one bit). And just talking about it, letting them ask me questions, so my whole English group is now as clued up on diabetes as I am!
And I know it worked, I went low again today before history, and my english teacher passed me as I was trying to sort things out, she noticed the signs of my sugars messing up, asked if I was ok, I told her yes and she walked away and on her way back she waited with me until I'd checked my bloods again, and then commented that they were "a bit on the low side", and I was so pleased with that because before that point, even though I have been her student now for over a year, it was not something she knew, but I've made one more person understand about diabetes, and I am happy about that :)
Let someone in, make them understand. It's not something they need to feel sorry for you about, just a fact of life that their pancreas works and ours doesn't. It isn't like it is contagious or anything, but at the same time we are not born with knowledge, we need to be taught these things, I know this stuff because I have grown up with it, but if I am talking to someone who hasn't got diabetes, or doesn't know anyone with diabetes, well then I can't expect them to understand unless I am patient enough to explain it to them.
Keep Smiling :)
Love, Tutti-Frutti
xxx
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