Friday, May 4, 2012

YDMV - A Loving/Hateful Phrase

YDMV - Your Diabetes May Vary. I love this phrase. I hate this phrase.

I love it because it's SO TRUE. What will work for one person won't work for another, and people that get that are my instant BFF's. There are people who understand that exercise may drop your sugars or raise them, people who get that correction boluses are not created equal. People who understand that just because it's generally accepted wisdom, it doesn't mean that it will work for you. Everybody's body is different. That's just the way the world is. Doctors and CDE's who get this are worth their weight in gold. (or worth their "wait", as it often is.) YDMV.

I hate this phrase for the same reason. It's SO TRUE. Diabetes would be so much easier if insulin and glucose and carbs and protein and exercise and sleep and sickness and stress would act the exact same way in everybody's body. If one unit of Humalog/Novolog would exactly cover 15 grams of carbs, no matter how much you weigh, how long you've had the disease, or how active, sick, or stressed you are. That way, when somebody asks "How do I counteract this high?" everybody would have the same answer, and it would WORK. The way it's SUPPOSED to. I wish all carbohydrates were created equal. I wish they wouldn't vary, based on how much fat and protein you consume with them, or how refined they are. I wish fruit came with nutrition labels.

But if wishes were fishes....

I think everybody with chronic illness feels this way. Wouldn't it be great if MS or Lupus responded exactly the same way to treatment and caused identical symptoms? Wouldn't life be better for those with chronic fatigue if going off gluten fixed everything, all the time? Wouldn't cancer patients have peace of mind knowing for certainly what the radiation/chemo will do? YDMV. Substitute "diabetes" for "disease" and it pretty much describes everything.

Except strep. I think that pretty much responds to antibiotics most (if not all) of the time. I could be wrong. After all, YDMV.

No comments:

Post a Comment