# 7 Questions You Should Never Ask Someone With Diabetes



## Northerner (Apr 16, 2015)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 29.1 million Americans have diabetes. However, a lot of people who don't personally have the condition might not know a lot about it. 

Whether someone has type 1 or type 2 diabetes, there are some things that you should avoid asking them.

http://www.empowher.com/diabetes-type-2/content/7-questions-you-should-never-ask-someone-diabetes

I've been asked a few of these, although it has to be said, sometimes they are genuine inquiries from people wishing to understand things better


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## Sally71 (Apr 16, 2015)

Like you Northie I don't mind people asking questions if they are genuinely interested and trying to understand.  Have had a couple of instances recently of kids sharing sweets/inviting daughter to birthday parties and of course the parents thought that she wouldn't be able to eat anything sugary.  They did make the effort to ask me about it though, which is far preferable to people just making assumptions!

Slightly more annoying is when you sit down to eat with other people, they look at what's on daughter's plate and ask "can she eat that?". Er, yes, I wouldn't be giving it to her of she couldn't, would I?!  We've been fairly lucky so far though and haven't had too many of those instances!

We went to visit my grandmother recently (97 years old).  She has spent half her life with my mum refusing most sweet things and cannot get her head around the fact that my daughter can pretty much eat what she wants when she wants.  She kept trying to offer us food - crisps, grapes and the like.  We had brought our own lunch and didn't want any, in the end in an attempt to stop her offering I pointed out that my daughter can't eat anything without taking insulin, and whilst on a pump it's perfectly easy to do 20 boluses a day if you so wish, I'd rather lump them together a bit and just stick to 3 meals a day and as few snacks as possible.  This nearly backfired however when one of the carers came round offering us some rather yummy looking sticky buns.  My Gran immediately yelled out "She can't eat them!". So the carer almost took them away, I however decided that they looked like they were worth an extra bolus and so I immediately said "Oh yes she can!"


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## banjo (Apr 16, 2015)

For me people can ask any question they like as i am unlikely to be offended - chances are is that i will bore them to death explaining about diabetes so much so they may well never ask another question on any subject to anyone ever again. In part this is this forums fault for giving me ammunition to answer them and partly mine as once i start talking i am hard to shut up.


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## khskel (Apr 16, 2015)

I'm with Banjo, ask away and I'll educate you to death.


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## trophywench (Apr 16, 2015)

khskel said:


> I'm with Banjo, ask away and I'll educate you to death.



That's 3 of us so far.  Best not go to the same places, be terrible if there were only us 3 LOL (couldn't ask each other any question, bearing in mind we clearly know everything already ROFLMAO !)


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## banjo (Apr 16, 2015)

Crumbs you got us together and we would have no friends in hours flat.


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## zuludog (Apr 17, 2015)

I have noticed that people fall into two categories when asking me questions about diabetes

Most people are genuinely interested about the causes of diabetes; what it is, exactly; how it affects me and how I deal with it; and so on

Another, smaller group that is more aggressive, and tend to argue and interrupt when I tell them things, especially when it goes against the limited knowledge and misunderstandings they already have


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## banjo (Apr 17, 2015)

yup agreed zuludog i know what you mean - unfortunatley for them the explanation of how you got diabetes is not a short answer lol


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## Sally71 (Apr 17, 2015)

Some people just think they are always right don't they, even when faced with evidence to the contrary they still won't believe it 
So we could probably talk away all day and it wouldn't have any effect.  Must admit that anything to do with diabetes is my pet subject these days too!

My daughter I think gets more silly people than I do, kids who keep telling her that she can't eat sweets and won't be told otherwise . That is the most annoying, she said today there is one girl in particular in her year who thinks she knows everything about it just because her mum works in a chemist's. I wish I could teach her an appropriate response, something like "do you have diabetes? Do you have to deal with it 24/7, stabbing yourself with needles, having to faff about doing calculations before you can eat anything, having boring/embarrassing conversations with doctors about it every few months, and trying to work out exactly how best to avoid feeling like a load of rubbish all the time? No?? Well I do, so I think that means I know a little bit more about it than you do, thank you very much."

Sadly I don't think she has the confidence yet to say things like this, she still would rather hide away.  Hopefully over time she will learn to be less shy about it, in some ways she's getting better but she still can't handle know-alls!


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## robert@fm (Apr 18, 2015)

#2 is idiotic; no artificial sweetener has ever been proved to be harmful at, or anywhere near, sensible dose levels, and most of them have been in use for decades, so if the "problems" some people harp on about were real, they would have become evident by now.  (The experiments done in the 1970s which demonstrated "harm" were done in blatant, and probably wilful, disregard of the first law of toxicology ("there is no such thing as a 'non-toxic' substance; the question of toxicity is never 'if', but only 'at what dose' "), for the dosages given in those experiments were equivalent to a human taking kilograms of the stuff every day for a long period. As another diabetic once said on another forum, in reply to an "aspartame is harmful" nutcase, "it's far safer than sugar".

My friend Wills once used a variant of #3; despite knowing that I am diabetic, he jumped to the conclusion that I use sweeteners in an attempt to lose weight, and thus advised me to give them up because "they aren't working".


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## KookyCat (Apr 19, 2015)

I'm a right stroppy mare when needed (it's a talent I'm told) but I have absolutely no problem with anyone asking me anything about diabetes, in fact I'd rather they ask and be upfront than make assumptions.  People often ask if I'm embarrassed injecting in public, which mystifies me slightly because it's never occurred to me to be embarrassed even when I'm wrangling to muster up a bit of fat   I just assume that anyone who has an issue (and there have been some) will get over themselves or move.  I did have a very confusing conversation with a lady who had just started injecting after Metformin didn't work for her though, she was convinced my three units of novorapid weren't going to cover my hummus and falafel salad and chocolate brownie...but then I nearly choked on said brownie when she said she was dialling up 20 units of rapid insulin for her wee feast.  i had to show her my meter at the one hour mark to convince her I wasn't entirely wrong about my ratios.  I wasn't entirely sure what to say when she flashed hers and it read 15.6, my stroppy pants couldn't save me when she saw my 6.9 and asked if hers was too high


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## trophywench (Apr 19, 2015)

I may have told you that we were talking to some random people we met on a campsite in France - sharing a bottle of red LOL - when they mentioned a friend had lost a foot having cut it and not noticed (he was messing about on his boat and didn't notice until he saw all the blood - so one assumes it was a BIG cut!)  It stopped bleeding so he didn't bother seeing a doctor, blah blah.

I commented that I'd had D for over 30 years, and so far no complications.

Oh well - clearly YOURS diabetes isn't as bad as his then!

Fortunately I'd just taken a swig out of my glass and just about managed to swallow it and breath in to give them a mouthful when I heard Pete saying, calmly

No!  Not by any means!  Just that Jen has always taken care to CONTROL hers better than he obviously did !

Phew.  Saved by the husband.


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## Northerner (Apr 19, 2015)

Is your diabetes not the severe type then, Jenny?


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