There are people who don’t understand type one diabetes. Children and adults will ask you questions. What do you do if you get questions like:
Did you get diabetes because you ate too much?
Are you on drugs? Why do you use needles?
Can you keep up with the rest of the kids if you’ve got diabetes?
Strategies to deal with questions about type one diabetes
There are two strategies to take. One is to ignore the questions and the people asking the questions and the other option is to educate. Letting the questions and the people asking them get to you and make you feel badly is NOT one of the options.
So if your feelings are hurt or you feel in anyway “put down” when you hear these questions, educating and advocating is the best strategy to take.
Example answers to questions about juvenile diabetes
Having answers to these kind of comments already prepared in your mind can help you deal more effectively with them.
Here are some ways to respond:
Did you get diabetes because you ate too much?
“Type one diabetes is not caused by eating too much, or by being fat or by eating sugar. I didn’t do anything to get type one diabetes.”
Are you on drugs? Why do you use needles?
“I need insulin for my type one diabetes. I need to inject it through the needle.”
Does it hurt?
“Of course it hurts to inject myself or prick my finger for testing. I’m human.”
Can you keep up with the rest of the kids if you’ve got diabetes?
“Yes, I can do everything you can do. There are many athletes with type one diabetes. Gary Hall Jr. is a 5 time Olympic gold medalist with Type 1 diabetes.”
Can you eat sugar?
“Yes, I can eat sugar and I can eat anything you can eat.”
Educating as advocacy
One reason you might answer the questions is to help other people with juvenile diabetes. Remember, if you have educated just one of these people, you’ve saved some other person with type 1 diabetes from having to answer that person’s questions. And that person may actually share the facts about type 1 diabetes with others. So you are saving many more people from this experience.
However, there will be times when all these questions are overwhelming. Sometimes you may not want to answer them. That’s fine. Be yourself.
Doing the work of an organ as important as the pancreas can be hard. Know that you are doing the best you can.
[there are videos that might be appropriate for this on youtube. Here is an example: http://youtu.be/Y2tzeWp_rvk ]