The power of community in dealing, living and thriving with a chronic, autoimmune disease can’t be emphasized enough. I didn’t understand the importance or relevance of the diabetic community till I became a part of one. Five years ago, I walked into Beena Ma’am’s room in Medanta, unaware of how life was going to turn around for me, for the better of course. How that room would be my comfort zone, of letting out everything that was pulling me down, a place where I would find Yashavi, my first ever T1D friend and a place where I would slowly but surely become ready to take on the world. But I didn’t know all this then. At that point in time, I was dejected, defeated and broken with my diagnosis, and I took this to be just another doctor’s appointment. It wasn’t!
Half a decade later, life has turned out to be everything but what I feared.
SMBG is an accepted norm of type 1 diabetes management today and I sometimes wonder, how important is your endocrinologist then? Half a decade of the diabetic life and this is what I can tell you, your endocrinologist and the support groups are going to be your guiding light in being efficient. My first support group meeting was a strange, exhilarating experience. I was in a room full of people with similar experiences, problems, and anecdotes of living this diabetic life. There were people who had solutions to my problems. I finally started to feel at peace after months of confusion, despair, anger and a bit of helplessness at what I was facing. I found friends with whom I could discuss my diabetic problems and other “life” problems with the same amount of ease. And it was liberating!
These monthly support group meetings are a great place to learn about different things and meet new fellow diabetics, to let newly diagnosed people and their caregivers find a safe place to be.
The July 2019 SAKSHAM meeting was one such fun meetup I attended after a gap of few months and I could literally feel the love as soon as I entered. Beena Ma’am’s silent yet re assuring smile does wonders for me (and for a lot of us) 😊
July’s support group meeting was focused on a very important aspect of living with diabetes, Mental health. Dr Priyanka Padhy, a lovely psychologist who I have had the pleasure of interacting with personally before conducted this session where she shared valuable inputs on mental health and it’s dealing with it effectively. She emphasized and taught us the basics of the symptoms of various health issues and how to deal with it easily. She touched upon the basics of mental health and debunked various myths associated with it. It was such learning experience. Unexpected curveballs, peaks and troughs in daily life events will always there. They say, the trick is in calming your mind. This session gave us all tips and tricks to achieve that.
After this, we had a fun art activity with Ms. Tina Khanna. I’ve heard about art’s therapeutic capabilities, and this activity proved to be such a great one! Tina gave us all one word and we had a minute to draw what it symbolized for us. For me, it was an insight into how I subconsciously interpreted often used diabetic terms. It was fun to see everybody’s different interpretation of the same word. Each of us coming from different backgrounds, cultural and social upbringings, educations, age, profession brought together because of a non-working pancreas!
We also managed to squeeze in a quick warmup and workout session with our in-house sportspersons. I’ve not been very active with my exercise regime these past few months, but being in the company of my fellow T1Ds, I was so inspired to get back at it. As Hellen Keller said, “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.”
All the fun, play and engaging conversations continued but we were also asked to get done our monthly retinopathy, KFT and BG tests done. Comparing our HBA1cs and discussing changes required to get better at our diabetes management always motivates us a lot.
We are having another fun meet up on 20th Oct, Sunday at 9 AM. Come and join us to learn a little and share your thoughts and experiences. You don’t know who you would end up inspiring!
Hope to see you all there!
Written by Chhavi Chadha
Saksham 