Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Take Your Mom to the Endocrinologist

I am one of those people who are freakishly close with their mom. I share with her everything that I would share with my best friends. We are attached at the hip on most occasions with one exception: the endocrinologist. I've been seeing my same adorable, wonderful doctor for over two years and no one outside of me has ever met him. So finally, I asked my mom on an endocrinologist date and we took off for Joslin.

While on most occasions I am happy/excited to be hanging out with my mom...this day was different. Since I was diagnosed, I have braved nearly all doctor's appointments alone. I am often times nervous when I go but being alone forces me to rely on my own strength (or so I thought). This day, I was EXTREMELY anxious. In a fit of anxiety, I even tried to convince my mom to skip the appointment for a shopping day instead. After it was all said and done, I had to ask myself...why? I thought about my tendency to do eveything diabetes-related by myself and realized that it is mostly out of my concern for burdening those around me. In everyday life, there is almost always at least a few minutes in my day where I worry or perhaps don't feel right. I would never want my friends, family, boyfriend to spend their time with me worrying because then, I start to feel like a diabetic instead of a 22 year old girl. I realized how detrimental it is to behave this way after my mom came to Joslin. She was not worried or treating me different, she was absolutely amazed at the comradery between myself and my doctor. She had never even seen the resources that Joslin offers its patients. No wonder people worry..they don't know any better because I don't tell them. Lesson learned.

P.S. I am disapointed in my lack of blogging over the summer but life has been hectic and has afforded me little opportunity to reflect about the betes side of things. However, I have good news...I am officially employed and it is in the realm of all things diabetes. I've even found a grad school program which will allow me to expand my career horizons while researching community health and diabetes (now I just have to get in!). So now, I can confidently say that there will be much more blogging and fabulous things to come!