Neil spent part of this week on a Zoom call, chewing a protein bar on mute (which is like chewing a shoe), nodding at a quarterly something, and thinking about his blood sugar while nobody on the call had any idea. So he's had a week too...
The episode, word for word
This week I was on a Zoom call. I know you guys have heard me talk about this, I do a lot of these calls. And I was eating a protein bar, which, if you've ever tried to eat a protein bar quietly, you know is impossible. It's like chewing a shoe. So I'm sitting there chewing a shoe on mute while somebody presents a quarterly something, nodding like I'm taking it all in, and the whole time I'm thinking about my blood sugar and not one person on that call had any idea.
I bring this up because I'm about to ask you 2 questions, and I need you to answer them honestly, and I want you to know I've also had a week.
I'm Neil Greathouse, this is Your Best T1D Year.
Okay, here's the principle for today. You can't fix a thing you won't name. So this week we name it, together.
Here's the science, and this one's my favorite of the whole month. 2008, Annals of Family Medicine, Fisher, Polonsky, and some colleagues. They took that 17-question distress scale, the one doctors never use because who has time for 17 questions, that's not a screening tool, that's a BuzzFeed quiz. And they boiled it down. Not to 10. Not to 5. To 2. Fisher and Polonsky might be the only 2 people in the history of medicine who made a form shorter.
2 questions, and they tested them as a real screening tool. If you score high on these, there's a very good chance the full scale would agree.
Rate each one, 1 to 6. 1 is "not a problem." 6 is "a very serious problem."
Question one. Feeling overwhelmed by the demands of living with diabetes.
Question two. Feeling that I am often failing with my diabetes regimen.
That's the whole screen. If either one is a 3 or higher, the people who invented this would want your doctor to keep asking. And I'm going to guess, based on nothing but 34 years of standing in waiting rooms, that a lot of you just scored a 4 and said "huh" out loud in your car.
Overwhelmed, and failing. The entire field of diabetes psychology fits on a Post-it, and nobody ever handed us the Post-it. Every endo office in America has 400 Post-its and not one of them has this on it. They've got "Flu shots available." Thanks.
Which brings me to the thing I need from you this week, and it takes about 90 seconds.
I built a poll. It's in the newsletter that went out Monday and it's in my stories today. It starts with those 2 questions. Then 7 more, one for each flavor I gave you Wednesday. Then 2 that are mine. "Do you have one person in your life who gets it?" Yes, no, or used to. And the last one. "What's the sentence you wish somebody had said to you when you were diagnosed?"
That last one is the one I want. In 3 weeks I'm going to read our numbers back to you on this show. Not a study from California. Ours. How many of us feel powerless, how many have a person, how many don't. And in December I'm going to read your sentences, because I have a theory that the sentence you needed at 20 is the exact sentence somebody listening needs today, and you're the only one who can say it.
Don't polish it. First thing that comes out. Mine was "get over yourself," which Hallmark has not returned my calls about, but it's true.
Some of you are going to fill out that poll and hit "no" on the person question and feel it. I hit "no" on that question for about 10 years. So I'm not going to tell you it's fine. I'm going to tell you that's why we're doing this month, and that Tuesday there were 8 people on a list, and next Tuesday there'll be 8 more, and every one of them answers DMs.
The one thing this week is unchanged, and it's Friday, so this is for the procrastinators. Hi. I'm one of you. One real comment on one person's post. Not an emoji, a sentence. You've got till Sunday night. You've been sitting in the waiting room for 11 years, man. That's longer than Friends ran. Say hi to somebody.
If you love somebody with type 1, same deal. One comment, as you.
Poll's in the newsletter and in my stories. yourbestt1dyear.com if you're not on the list yet.
You're not doing a bad job. You're doing a difficult job, and today, maybe for the first time, somebody asked you how it's going.
Nobody remembers easy. My name is Neil. Monday is Awareness Month week, and I want to talk about the one thing 3 out of 4 of us are afraid of. See you then.
This is the episode script as read on the mic. It's education and encouragement, not medical advice. Talk to your care team before changing anything about your management.
