This thread reminded me of the time I and some other residents took a med student who was a residency candidate out to lunch at a fairly nice place. Late in the meal he decided to test/inject insulin at the table. Whether due to nervousness or whatever, it was a bloody affair. As in “stanch the hemorrhage with several napkins” bleeding. Embarassing for the candidate, but we all survived and he got the position.
So you can add me to the camp of “if you need to do it in the restaurant and can be discreet about it, fine.”
On the other hand, anyone who changes their kid’s diaper at the table should be expelled from the restaurant and placed in the stocks.
All those points you gained by quoting The Princess Bride? You just blew them all away by quoting bad 80’s pop. Sheesh - you went into the red, in fact.
I’ve read the whole thread. I fail to see where the OP is turning anything into “pageantry.” Is there a swimsuit portion to the competition?
His son is young. He is too young to handle all of the testing himself. Therefore, he has help. Helping someone do something will never be as discreet as them doing it alone, but that doesn’t mean there is any major production involved.
My husband is a non-insulin dependent diabetic. His tests take the teeny tiniest drop of blood ever. He tests on his forearm. The only way you’d know he was testing is if you tried to find out.
Type II, non-insulin dependent, diabetics are probably more common in this country than inulin dependent ones. Many Type IIs can be managed with oral medication, since the production of insulin isn’t really the problem–sensitivity to it is. Many people might not know insulin-dependent diabetics. Not only are oral meds common, many diabetics don’t manage their disease at all. Those people would never take insulin at the table–they aren’t taking insulin. For those who are insulin-dependent, though, the shots are a way of life, a fact of life. I am certain, unless you are a hermit, you’ve been in a room with someone dosing with insulin and you didn’t even know it.
Thanks, Hentor. I have the feeling my parents would have loved to have known you when they were the only parents of diabetics they knew and were in charge of managing my diabetes. They’re a little out of the loop now, since I’ve been pretty independent since I was 12, but they both still occasionally freak out when I have lows. The most memorable incident is Dad forcing a gourmet grocery store owner to draw him a map so he could find a gas station that sold orange juice or regular soda, while I was having wild mood swings in the car with my mother. I wish you best of luck with your son, and hope his lows never include crying jags or extreme stubbornness, for they are the pits.
Fortunately, my professors are more than understanding (may Dr. Jim Miller have endless material to feed his great big postmodern heart), and have let me miss class when I need to or start a test and then finish it later. They somehow get more upset if you come to class pale and shaking or (in my case when I have high blood sugars) flushed bright red and chugging water like there ain’t no tomorrow. In high school, I always had math right after gym class, so I sometimes took the tests during study hall instead or took it easy in gym that day.
I’m actually on the tail-end of an all-nighter right now. I’m trying to learn to take my coffee black, but it’s hard. The only thing harder is explaining to your friends that getting reallyreallyreally drunk and then passing out isn’t in your best interests. Or anyone’s, really.
Kalhoun, I don’t think Hentor is doing his child a disservice. Far from it. He’s not making an elaborate production out of it anymore than I am. I would think a man fumbling with another person’s hand in his lap in public would draw more attention than laying everything out on the table, especially if it was a child. Hentor’s method all sounds very normal to me.
Just one correction, while there are diabetics who don’t manage their disease at all (an ex wife of my friend springs to mind) and are very busy making the least of their lifespan, most diabetics who don’t need insulin do manage their diabetes through diet and exercise. Not managing the disease at all is stupid…the question becomes can you manage via diet and exercise, oral medications or via injection.
No, he is going to be known as “Johnny, the kid who is still around because his parents made it their priority to manage his disease”
As none of us has actually seen Hentor inject his son in a restaurant we have no way of knowing how much of a “pageantry” they make of it. I would guess that since his son has to be injected several times a day, has to test his blood several more times a day, multiply that by 365 days a year for seven years or so, the novelty and desire for pageantry wore off a long, long time ago.
Show me ONE FUCKING RELIABLE CITE that says a 15 second walk to the fucking bathroom is going to make the difference between well-managed diabetes and dialysis.
What harm? You lost me.
Oh, I get it. Hey kid, do your own testing and give your own shot like a man. Can’t coddle him, it’ll make him a pansy. :rolleyes:
And, it has already been pointed out that some restrooms are so filthy, many people wouldn’t even want to take a dump in them, let alone try to deal with bottles and needles.
I do understand the point you are making, but I would counter it by saying that the more people see and learn about the disease, the less stigmatized it becomes. Eventually “Johnny the Diabetic” just becomes “my friend Johnny”.
There are two girls on my daughter’s soccer team that have sports induced asthma. The team mom keeps their inhalers in her pocket and when they need them the girls let the coach know, he subs them out, they run over, take a hit and then go back to play. I have never heard anyone refer to them as anything but Niccole and Emily.
'Cept a few of us, of course. Interesting how the actual needlephobes who have posted are pretty much in agreement with Una’s eminently reasonable post on all points.
But those of you fighting over god-knows-what at this point, by all means, have fun!
How am I not doing that? How am I making a pageant out of it?
My son is involved in school, little league baseball, Indian Guides, strings, and plays with friends. All the kids know he has diabetes. At Indian Guides camp, we all dine together and I test his blood sugar and give him his injections at the table. Nobody minds, and the normality of the whole thing has led to a complete lack of stigmatization for my son. If we disappeared to do some weird thing in the bathroom before every meal, the kids would think something of it. As it is, they watch him take his injections and don’t think twice.
Where’s the pageantry?
So, in sum, despite your heart-felt concerns, my son is [name not Johnny] the smart kid who plays baseball, does Indian Guides, plays the violin, loves computer and video games who had a really cool birthday party last weekend at the laser tag place, and who also has diabetes.
Where’s the pageantry? Is it because we aren’t hiding?
How about the Straight Dope column where Cecil talks about all the fecal matter sprayed around a bathroom and says there’s twice as much in the ladies room than there is in the mens?
Except he’s not making it into a pageant. He’s just doing it and that’s that. I don’t see where you’re getting the pageantry from. Can you point to a specific phrase or sentence that screams diabetic dinner theater to you? I’ve tested and laid my supplies out on the table before, and it (prepare to be shocked) didn’t cause anymore stir than doing it in my lap does. Didn’t create a stir at all, in fact. I’ve been doing it for over fifteen years – haven’t been kicked out of a restaurant yet. I doubt Hentor et familia are leaping about singing some sort of Happy Fun Insulin song before getting down to business.
Sorry, I’m new here, I didn’t realize that you were the only one on the whole board who is allowed to use hyperbole to get a point across, Mr. Fucking “pageantry.”
It’s amazing how you’re so fixated on how easy it would be to walk to the bathroom, and yet you totally ignore how easy it would be for you to turn your damn head for two seconds.
And speaking of being new, can anyone tell me what “whoosh” means?
Hentor, not that I want to get in the firing line, but I’m curious about a couple of things:
Is there any point during the process where, if I glance casually at your table, am I likely to see the needle?
If so, is there any non-pain-in-the-butt change you could make to your routine to lessen the chances of my seeing the needle on a casual glance?
I’m not asking you to go all cloak-and-dagger about it; that’d be silly. All I’m asking is for you to make reasonable precautions to keep needlephobes from getting their phobias triggered by your activities.
“Discreet” to me DOES mean hiding things a bit. Again, I’m not talking about setting up a tent over your table to block all sight; but if you do things like others have described (opening the kit behind dishes, doing it on the booth next to you, moving a water glass to block view of the activity), I and other needlephobes would appreciate it.
this is unfair, untrue and harsh as hell. Or is it the last stand of an argument? A parting shot, as it were?
Seriously, I am seeing some truly disheartening posts here. Are people that nasty? Or is it a case of not sure about this, beyond my ken, so push it away-ness?
Rereading your post, Kalhoun , I find myself indignant on behalf of Hentor and his son. How dare you judge someone like this? Do you know anything about juvenile diabetes and the potential hazards of poorly controlled blood sugar on a growing body?
But what disturbs me most is the swipe, “Johnny the diabetic”. In no way are Hentor or his family using their child in this way. I know of no family that does so. The ones I know(they have a son named Alex) check the sugar on the sidelines of the soccer game and noone thinks a thing about it. Someone may ask about it, and they are gracious enough to educate the askers. I don’t think of Alex as a kid with diabetes-I think of him as a demon soccer player. I have heard no outcry of “disease risk! Take them away!”.
Newsflash: if you have Type I (juvenile) diabetes–you BETTER live that disease-or it will kill you slowly and with much pain. You fear an “Ewww” factor in a restaurant? Come to work and I’ll show you foot wounds, gangrene, dialysis machines. There may no longer be gangrene on the battlefield, but there is in every hospital-the sweet stench of death by inches. These are the folks who don’t practice tight control(or any control), who are non-compliant with their regimes–don’t worry, it’s good for you diners! They aren’t checking blood sugars in any restaurant they go to.
Nope, but they are quietly going blind and losing all kidney function–and probably at least a toe or two, if not a limb. But they won’t cause you a moment’s distress while you enjoy your dessert.
Diabetes impacts on every organ, every body system–every cell in the body. Maintaining and ensuring tight blood sugar controls is KEY to maintaining health for these folks. Do you ask the emphysemic to do without his oxygen tank at the movies? This kid needs that test and injection as much as an asthmatic needs his inhaler. Simple humanity would dictate that the need outweighs the conventions.
Kids like Hentor Junior used to just up and die, after wasting away. We are fortunate that that is no longer the case–but the disease is very demanding of it’s sufferers. It is a daily challenge, not made easier by morons who insist on a Hollywood set for their dining ambience. What is next? Asking all the ugly, deformed people to leave so that your eyes are not offended by the lack of aesthetics?
No, we can only go by Hentor’s description of the process. Calculating, opening kits, sticking, wiping, testing, injecting…all on tabletop for the rest of the diners to share in. This is his description; not mine.
As of 2002, about 210,000 people under 20 years of age have diabetes. This represents 0.26 percent of all people in this age group. Age 20 years or older: 18 million; 8.7 percent of all people in this age group have diabetes.
Unfortunately, this is not a rare disease. However, the instance of victims laying it out in public during the dinner hour is.
