January 10, 2008

Newbie Advice II: Pain in the Alliteration

All those years ago when we had our first diagnosis I remember thinking, (well OK I said it right out loud) “Did they intentionally make these words up to be confusing?”

The answer is YES. (Well it is my answer anyway.)

So my newbie friends, I thought a little vocabulary rant would help. There a books full of confusing diabetes terms. I’ll just mock, errr... elaborate on a few:
Hypoglycemic and Hyperglycemic. I don’t know about the rest of the world but speaking from my personal experience I was way too much in a daze of sleep deprivation, caffeine and commuting back and forth to Children’s Hospital to have brain capacity or attention span to make out anything other than Hypblurglycimic when ever I heard or read theses words. They were indistinguishable and interchangeable as far as I could tell. Both meant bad. I could get high and low but not from these words.

Yeah I get the whole Hypo = Low. I also get sleep deprived and over caffeinated = hyped up. Using what little functional brain power I had to parse out the o or er mid word was asking too much. It took 10 to 15 months to have those words mean anything to me without a dictionary.

In point of fact I didn’t master them until I needed to be able to reliably confuse people who were being a pain in the butt by spitting them out real fast. I knew just exactly how mind warping that could be.
Speaking of mind warp, I think the folks who named insulin must have been up watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show and sampling the pharmaceutical company’s rejects all night. Humalog, Humulin, Novalog it’s inhumane. Seriously, there you are trying like hell to sort this stuff out and not make a mistake. Not only because you are holding a needle to your kid with their life on the line but you don’t want to sound like a moron while you’re at it. 

No such luck the good folks at Big Pharmamarketing bought into the whole Transylvania Transsexual alliteration too much. Who cares if patients can figure out which is which, they are laughing their butt off.

Just in case you crack the insulin code they use the same tactic on what the insulins are used for; Bolus / Basal. I kept wondering why I needed a bowl of basal, was pesto meant to be a big part of the new healthy eating program? Nope Basal and Bolus are just part of the babble. Like the hypo / er, I didn’t master them until I found they were effective offensive verbal weapons when use rapidly against the food police and other such pains in the derrière.

So yes they intentionally make these words up to be confusing, learn them use them, they will empower you. They are the first lines of defense in the war against the food police and practitioners of 504 obfuscation.


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1 comment :

  1. Thanks for the great and motivating post! I fully agree with you especially on letting brain games improve your brain power and help you achieve success. Do check out http://www.subconscious-mind.org, they have a whole host of interesting and helpful articles.

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