After finally being diagnosed, with staggeringly high blood sugar, near DKA, I stumbled on gluten-free+low-carb and like magic, was able to bring my blood sugar so well under control that my doctor decided that I wasn't diabetic anymore. I took that to heart, not that I was cured, but that I could manage my diabetes like this forever... and that turned out to not be true. I am now insulin dependent.
I beat myself up about this 20 times a day. It's a regular topic to be reviewed when I wake up at 2am. You'd think I'd get tired of the subject! :biggrin: Every day I have little talks with myself about if I really have diabetes or if being on insulin is my fault, a choice that I made to get away with eating again. Low-carb worked so well at first that it made me think that I was in control, and that anything other than "non-diabetic" blood sugar levels was because I chose to not do the "right thing". Unfortunately this mentality was often encouraged, never by my doctors, but by the blogs/forums that I frequented.
For maybe two years, I coped with my declining insulin production by eating less. Before finally going on insulin, I was only eating once a day and my blood sugar was still sky high in spite of the daily 18 hour fast.
I don't know how to "fix" what's wrong in my head.
I flipflop between utterly hating myself, punishing myself, resolving to go back to restricting, as if that would bring back the easy magic of those initial years after diagnosis. Then the next day I remind myself that my genes were stacked against me from the start, that my multiple auto-immune diseases mean that maybe my Type 2 diagnosis isn't the full story (as though there's virtue to be found it having diabetes caused by an autoimmune attack vs some other cause... there isn't), and that I can manage what my doctors are all encouraging me to do: for the love of god, eat and don't skip your insulin.
So yeah, if you ever wondered how one gets to be a moderator on this forum, I'm a great example that one of the requirements isn't having your diabetes act together. :devil:
For me, managing my blood sugar isn't my biggest diabetes challenge. Sure it's something that I think about 24/7, but I don't struggle with it. I struggle with letting go of the blame, the guilt and the arrogance that made me believe that I knew the cause of and solution to diabetes.