It’s great to be participating in the fourth annual d-blog week. (I almost wrote competing, but we know with my mad skillz there is no competition…)

I am excited though, because for a week someone else tells me what I should be writing and the creativity I have can solely go to making stuff up. That is key. So, “hi my name is Brian and I work in a button factory, I have a wife, a dog, and a family….” Crap, now that song is stuck in my head. See what happens when I let my mind go free, I blame you all. Well Karen, but you all as well.

Let’s move into the prompt before I get lost in my mind.

“Often our health care team only sees us for about 15 minutes several times a year, and they might not have a sense of what our lives are really like. Today, let’s pretend our medical team is reading our blogs. What do you wish they could see about your and/or your loved one’s daily life with diabetes? On the other hand, what do you hope they don’t see?”

I know my endocrinologist does not read my blog. Since I have a new endo. We have only met once and it was a decent meeting so far. We shall see how things go from there. That being said it is harder for me to judge what he should know or not know, because we haven’t bonded yet and become best buds. Like that’s ever going to happen. But honestly it is hard to talk about the variables I don’t know. I mean our first meeting he just wanted to get to know me and know my basic information.

We didn’t need to talk at that time about any major issues, any problems, or even how the Yankee’s are doing. (Baseball season hadn’t started at that point.)

I think though my comments to my endocrinologist and any member of the health care team can be basic common sense stuff. You really need to get to know the patient, I mean know them. Most of us are coming to you for lab work and prescriptions. If you know us, it makes it easier for us to open ourselves up to you, when or if a problem comes along. If you have an attitude of you are not doing this right or your shouldn’t be doing that. We will close ourselves off. We will not want to discuss problems with you for fear of you judging us unfairly. You truly may not know what we are dealing with and the why’s. My a1c whether it is good or bad is only one part of the puzzle for my daily life. If I have a 10 do not judge me, if I have a 7 do not judge me, if I have a 6 do not judge me. Ask me what is going on, ask what you can do for me? That is what we need, not the other way around.

Things I don’t want you to see. Well if I ever were to complain about your lack of care or ignorance, I wouldn’t want you to see that, but I doubt that you would do that to myself or anyone. You are a professional and would never do that to us.

Dr. M. you are new to me and I to you. Here is your chance to make a good impression with me. Treat me like a person, not a disease offer the vast amounts of knowledge in your head to me, but most especially treat the human side of me as well not just the diabetes side.