Seven Perfect Bites for the Process Engineer

Most of us have heard the saying, “have our cake & eat it too.”  Maybe we bake a homemade cake or perhaps instead we feast our eyes on a delicacy of a cake at the bakery.  Do you like cake?  Is it something else that speaks to your taste buds instead?  Try to picture the sweet treat right now.  The idea is to picture our favourite yummy treat, one that we love yet have this only a time or two or three a year.

If you don’t have diabetes then it is unlikely that you receive too much feedback on whatever happens to be on your plate while you are eating around others.  On the other hand, if you & I share  type 1 diabetes then we have likely heard too many times from people criticizing our choices. Why in the world do other people offer unsolicited advice?  At times others probably have their hearts in the right places yet remain unknowledgeable about what we can & cannot eat with type 1 diabetes.  Being an adult & an insulin pumper, I really do feel completely annoyed with the critique offered by others that just don’t get it.  Have you found yourself at this point from time to time too?  There are a couple of things that don’t work for me with my personality style & they are:  sarcasm & passive aggression so these are responses that I don’t engage in.  If I am cheesed off, I just say so in what I hope is a respectful, polite, informative fashion.  The times frankly in my life that I have wanted to kick my own butt are times when I have failed to choose to stand up for myself.  I like to believe that I have learned from those times & so for many years now, whether it feels easy or not, I choose to stand up for others & myself when the odd person gets it all wrong or is  behaving in an aggressive or bullying fashion.  Like most people, I have zero tolerance for bullying & find it rampant enough in interchanges between children & jarringly rampant as well amongst adults.  In my mind unwarranted criticism for the sake of criticism is a form of bullying behaviour.  For example if someone puts another person down to pull that person down to his or her level of misery then I personally would call that bullying behaviour.  If someone uses another person’s health challenge as a springboard to behave in a miserable, negative, nagging, critical fashion then I will do a couple of things.  The first thing is that I will call a spade a spade & the second thing is that I will let the person know that we are not going to have future interchanges like this again.  Okay, for sure there is the odd person here & there that digs his or her heels in convinced that they have to be right at all costs & will not listen to another vantage point or accept that they have behaved in a hurtful way.  In these instances, people may choose to tell us that we are the ones with the problem.  We may hear it in the statement that we are “too sensitive” or a variant of that.  If that is the case then I choose to love those particular folks from a distance.  I am not going to “go to war” with them though.  It equates a little like trying to reason with a 3 year old having a tantrum.  It is just not going to go well.  And the next step is that I feel cheesed off & then move the heck on.

Do you know what can curdle cheese cake faster than anything else I have ever experienced?  It is the odd sour critic who says to me from time to time, “you are not going to eat that, are you because that would be a big mistake!”  Hold on a minute, how does anyone who is a responsible adult enjoy being talked down to or being treated like a 5 year old child?  That is pretty rhetorical.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about folks that say to us something along the lines of “I did not think that people with diabetes can eat dessert.”  That is different.  That is just someone learning something new or changing a myth that is prevalent in society.  I am referring instead to someone basically attacking us verbally for being so “dopey.”  They sometimes are convinced that we have forgotten that we cannot eat the thing they have decided for us would surely lead to our immediate demise.  Come on! 

Two to three times a year I go ahead & enjoy one of my favourite desserts & that is cheese cake.  It is rich & I taste every bite with glee & the magic number of bites to complete bliss for me is 7.  Just naturally after 7 bites of cheese cake I am completely satisfied & down goes the fork.  There is no demise in sight either while I enjoy my 7 perfect bites.  Instead, I just figure out the math (carb to insulin ratio) like a responsible person & give my insulin pump a press of the appropriate number. 

One of the things that I like to jokingly say is choose wisely whenever I am out with friends or family & we are checking out desserts.  It is always with a wink because everyone that knows me knows that I mean, choose the dessert that is going to put the biggest smile on your face & do that guilt free.  Beyond choosing a treat from time to time, I have found that it is every bit as important to choose the dessert buddy wisely.  Who wants to ruin a treat by being in the company of someone who is criticizing our every choice.  It is not like we are going to go into “Mr. Creosille” mode!  I have a specific Dear Heart that shares a love of cheese cake so that is the “go to guy” 2-3 times a year to share those 7 perfect bites with.  This go to guy is our oldest son Matt.  There is no way that there is any mention of whether we should have cheese cake.  The discussion is instead of what kind to try this time around.  Do I think it is a good idea for me as a person with type 1 to enjoy this wee treat a few times a year?  No of course not!  I think it is a great idea!  Type 1 diabetes has quite enough to say about so many things day to day so I give it the big thumbs down in any say as to whether or not I will enjoy a treat here & there.  I like to call that the quietening of the beast that is type 1. 

Some people like to order dessert with a dollop of whip cream or a scoop of ice cream or a dessert minus part of it or hold that part of the dessert.  My attitude is  that I will have the cheese cake please, hold the comments, unsolicited, incorrect advice or critical insinuations & add instead an extra helping of glee & the perfect dessert buddy.

What does not amuse me is when a person looks at me like I am going to be  a “goner” because I am enjoying a treat from time to time.  I know what I am doing.  The proof of this is that I woke up to see today yet again & have been doing just this now for over 6 years while living with type 1.  We literally keep ourselves alive each day while we live with type 1.  I know I have to be responsible & I am responsible.  It is my belief that there are times that as people living with type 1 we do not receive the credit that is due for being responsible.  When I was first diagnosed with type 1 I remember a training nurse who stated that diabetics cannot be in charge of making decisions.  That was not only a strange statement, but it was also so far from the reality that I know I live day in & day out.  I have to make decisions for myself that sustain life.  I hate having type 1 but I would detest it even more if I believed for one minute that I was not the one ultimately making the best health choices for myself.  For sure I have had plenty of guidance along the way but ultimately I live my own life & I make the day in day out responsible decisions that keep me waking up each day.  The nurse trainer basically went on to imply that I was merely a new dopey type 1 diabetic who surely must be clueless.  It took microseconds for that myth to be dispelled.  We have to make choices day in & day out in between our endocrinologist appointments at the very least.  For me that means at a minimum, I keep myself vertical in 6 month increments & there is nothing dopey about that.  We keep ourselves literally alive & that is an adult reality so being referred to as a “dopey diabetic” is a huge oxymoron.  We do all the lifting for the function of what used to be the job of our pancreas & we do it 24-7.  Do you know what that means to me?  That means that we are running our own life saving process control around the clock, 365 days a year.  Do you know what I believe that makes us?  That makes us honourary senior process engineers.  Would someone speak to a senior process engineer the way they speak to us sometimes?  Well, if we are not being respected for the phenomenal job that we are doing running our process 24-7, then it is time in my mind to look for more people to surround ourselves with that “get it.” 

If someone goes out of his or her way to treat  me or others living with diabetes as if we are  “dopey diabetics” then I correct them big time.  The times when the words don’t permeate for whatever reason, I invoke what I like to call the “fancy penguin” approach.  Our oldest son, Matt is an incredible artist.  His drawings wow me big time!  About a year ago, Matt drew a character that he named “fancy penguin” & every single time I see it, I smile from ear to ear.  The great thing about art is that once you have experienced it, you can keep it in your treasured memory banks forever.  When someone is being especially difficult, I just picture that fancy penguin & I really find the level of agitation dwindles & is replaced with a laugh instead.  Instead of going to war with the person behaving in a difficult way or choosing to be sarcastic or passive aggressive, I bring out the best weapon of all, the fancy penguin.  Who doesn’t love a fancy penguin after all!

This honourary process engineer will keep on enjoying those 7 perfect bites sometimes with friends or family that get it & other times with fancy penguin!

My heart’s hope for you is that you give yourself huge credit for the job that you do day in & day out.  Maybe you choose to be a honourary process engineer.  Some days you may need the fancy penguin.  Through it all, may we always know that we expect to be treated with the respect that comes with being a honourary process engineer.

Smiles, Saundie :)

May your week ahead be fancy penguin free & see you next Monday for a new blog sharing :)