The essence of Thanksgiving transcends the traditional focus on food, embodying a spirit of gratitude, connection, and joy. Deborah eloquently shares her reflections on the holiday, emphasizing how it serves as a reminder to appreciate the loved ones in our lives. For those managing diabetes, particularly Type 1 diabetes, this time of year can present unique challenges. However, Deborah advocates for a balanced approach that allows individuals to partake in the festivities while prioritizing their health. Her perspective encourages a shift from a food-centric view of Thanksgiving to one that celebrates family, laughter, and shared experiences.

I hope you had a wonderful time of balance, self-reflection, and you are looking forward to a wonderful year ahead. 

-Deborah

Throughout the episode, Deborah shares practical tips on how to navigate Thanksgiving dinner as a Type 1 Diabetic. She recounts her strategy of carb counting and insulin management, illustrating how she successfully enjoyed the holiday without significant blood sugar spikes. By sharing her personal stories, such as the unexpected low blood sugar episode and her eventual enjoyment of cranberry sauce, Deborah highlights the importance of adaptability and mindfulness in managing diabetes. Her insights serve not only as guidance for those with diabetes but also as a reminder to everyone that the holiday spirit is about more than just culinary indulgences.

• Diabetes doesn't prevent someone from enjoying traditional holiday foods with proper planning.
• Taking time to reflect on what you're thankful for can enhance the Thanksgiving experience.

Deborah also tackles the misconceptions surrounding diabetes and the common assumptions people make about dietary limitations. She recounts a conversation with a family member who expressed surprise that she could have pie, showcasing the need for greater understanding of how individuals with diabetes can still enjoy traditional holiday foods. By demystifying her insulin pump and explaining its role in her diabetes management, Deborah aims to foster a sense of empathy and awareness among her audience. The episode culminates in a heartfelt message about the importance of community and support in navigating the complexities of living with diabetes, encouraging listeners to embrace the holiday spirit with gratitude and joy.

Chapters

• 02:25 Welcome
• 04:48 Thanksgiving Reflections for Diabetics
• 08:20 Managing Blood Sugar: Insights and Experiences
• 09:28 Understanding Type 1 Diabetes Management
• 11:36 Managing Diabetes: A Personal Experience
• 13:10 Reflections on Family and Thanksgiving

Episode Resources

• Medtronic Diabetes (Minimed)

Community

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Episode Credits

Perfectly Wonderful World [Episode Music]

• > available here <
• sung by Deborah E, Jazz Singer
• written by Denny Martin & Jaimee Paul
• mastered in Seaside Records Studio by Michael Anderson

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Listen to Perfectly Wonderful World

Listen to Perfectly Wonderful World by Deborah E

DeborahE

Okay, welcome everybody to another episode of DiabeticReal. And I'm Deborah. All right. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday this past week. And I sure did.

And so, you know, I thought we'd talk about Thanksgiving and especially Thanksgiving as a diabetic and specifically as a Type 1 Diabetic. Now I do like to keep this open as any diabetic, but there's certain things that do relate to the Type 1 Diabetic. So we're going to talk about that.

I realize that, you know, there's always this talk about food and food and food and what are you going to eat and the turkey dinner and all that, but personally I, you know, I'm not trying to be.

Again, I'm not a saint or anything like that, but I like to look at Thanksgiving as time with family and friends and you know, especially those you choose to hang out with and just a good time to stop and, you know, spend some time realizing what you're thankful for.

That was something that we always tried to focus on as a family with our kids and spend some time saying, hey, you know, what are you thankful for this year? Just really taking time to stop and think, you know, spend some time together, games, laughing, all that fun stuff and not to focus so much on food.

And mostly it's because, you know, if you focus so much on food and this gluttonous attention to food, you don't feel well after a while, diabetic or not, it can. What do you think? I mean, if you eat too much. Personally, I feel like a slog and it just then I just want to sit there.

I don't feel like running around or anything.

And some of the most fun Thanksgiving celebrations are those when you and play games, maybe even Monopoly, something like that with everyone else and all kinds of different games we've played. But we even like one year we played Wii with grandma and grandpa and you know, playing golfing games and all sorts.

It paired up different teams, all sorts of fun games and to me that's a great, well rounded Thanksgiving celebration where you can eat, yes, together, spend time together, but then play games together.

So anyway, we're going to talk about the food part because that's the part that can sometimes get people hung up when it comes to being a Type 1 Diabetic especially. And I didn't think about it at all this year because, well, hey, being a Type 1 Diabetic is just part of life. So that's pretty much every day for me.

Right. First of all, I'm Going to proudly say, my blood sugar did not go up at all. I sailed through Thanksgiving dinner without a problem.

But then again, I've had Type 1 diabetes almost all my life. So it's just a breeze. It's just another meal for me. You sit down. Well, you know, in another episode, in fact, I think I might do it.

Next episode, I'll talk more specifics as far as dealing with meals, but. And insulin and so forth.

But to me, I eyeball the food, even if I haven't prepared it, I eyeball the food, figure out what I'm going to eat, especially carbs. It's carb counting, and it's not carb counting just for dietary purposes. It's not about dieting. So calculating how much insulin you take.

So I calculate, I sit down, I eat. Now, in my situation this year, I actually didn't take enough food.

In other words, I calculated, I guess somebody must have gone a little bit lighter on the sugar or something, because I ate my food and I was low blood sugar, which meant there wasn't enough carb in the food that I was eating. So maybe somebody didn't add enough sugar or something to some of the food, which is great. Hey, that's wonderful.

So I actually, I have nothing against cranberries, and I just don't tend to grab cranberries. And that comes from those days when I was a little kid where it's like, don't eat sugar, don't eat sugar.

So I didn't grab cranberries, but nice little delight there when I had low blood sugar. This year, we got to go back in the kitchen and grab some cranberry sauce that my husband and I happened to have brought to the family dinner.

Easy to pick up at the grocery store when we were traveling in into the family dinner. And, boy, those are yummy. But, you know, a few spoonfuls of that will help the blood sugar come back up again.

So anyone that's a Type 1 Diabetic or even a type 2 diabetic can understand sometimes you have to adjust. Low blood sugar, eats more food, high blood sugar, exercise.

If you're type 2, take some insulin, Type 1, because it's all about balance and balance in life.

So, anyway, a little bit later after dinner, I went into the kitchen, and the host said to me, he says, oh, I suppose you can't have pie, can you, being diabetic? And I looked at him, I said, actually, I can. That's not a problem. He's like, really?

And it struck me as odd because I'VE been living with the Medtronic Mini Med insulin pump for so long and the method of counting the carbs and adjusting the insulin that it surprised me that he hadn't realized that. And that's fine. You can't expect the whole world to understand how you live with your Type 1 diabetes.

So that's why I thought, okay, I'm going to explain this because maybe other people don't understand that, maybe they don't know how we as Type 1 Diabetics live. So I'll explain it.

So the way I told them, I said, it's like this, it's kind of like this little device that I'm holding in my hand and I pulled out the insulin pump. It's like it's an external pancreas.

You in your body, you have a pancreas that takes in the food and it automatically adjusts to the food and it puts out the insulin. It balances your body system.

Now I was talking to my husband about this a few hours ago and talked about how he could go and eat too much food and just not feel well, but his body will catch up, the pancreas will catch up and start balancing the systems because the insulin will balance the system. The difference is with a Type 1 Diabetic, I've got this insulin pump and I have to eyeball the food before I eat it.

So I know and I dial in the insulin. So I'm telling my mechanical pancreas, if you will, AKA in my case, the brand of, you know, the Medtronic Mini Med insulin pump.

Now Maybe a Type 1 Diabetic out there has another brand but it's insulin pump and I'm telling it how much food I'm going to eat so that it can, it already has the. And again, we'll cover this in another episode so it can give me the amount of insulin that I need for the amount of food.

Now that also means when I sit down and eat, I need to eat the food. A few months ago I went to a family reunion and I hadn't seen some people in like 20 years.

Everyone was coming over and "Deborah, Deborah, Deborah," and giving me hugs and all this stuff. And my son-in-law got a plate of food for me which is wonderful. Dialed in insulin, everything's great. Problem is I didn't finish eating.

I was so excited to see everyone and giving everyone hugs that I didn't finish eating. Not a really good thing. If you dial in the insulin, you need to finish eating. So you know, it's, it's Kind of mechanical, if you will.

Or it's got electronics, computerized the whole thing. It's an external pancreas. You can think of it that way for layman's terms, but you do have to finish the eating part too. So it's.

It's an intentional process. Whereas people who are not diabetic have a pancreas that does this for them and automatically. So I explained that to him.

I said, yes, I can actually have pie now. Bless his heart. Oh, man, he gave me so much pie. It was so delicious. And whipped cream. No, no, it wasn't whipped cream.

He asked me, he said, do you want ice cream? And one of my favorite ways of answering yes is, well, I wouldn't say no. So he sent his daughter out to.

Out to the garage to the deep freeze to get ice cream. I thought, oh, man, if I knew she had to go out and get some ice cream, I would have said, no, thank you.

But you don't say, no, thank you after they've gone into so much trouble. So I had this big, huge piece of pie and ice cream and, like, probably twice as much as I would normally take. But I'm so blessed. So thankful.

So dial in a little extra insulin. Again, thankful to report my blood sugar never went out of parameter, so I dialed in the right amount of insulin.

Even if I did eat twice as much pie and ice cream as I would have taken myself, I enjoyed it thoroughly and more so. What I really enjoyed was eating with a family and spending time with the family.

So I hope that all of you out there enjoyed your time with your family. And you know what, even if it was time with yourself, I hope that you had a blessed Thanksgiving time.

I hope you had a wonderful time of balance, self-reflection, and you are looking forward to a wonderful year ahead. I'm looking forward to the time with you. And next episode of DiabeticReal. This is Deborah signing off.