It’s common for people to experience a range of thoughts and feelings when faced with a diabetes diagnoses. “Diabetes runs in my family, but I don’t think I have it.” “Diabetes? That’s probably just that cake my wife made on Sunday.” Sound familiar?
If you’ve been told you have diabetes and you don’t do anything about it, you may actually have two diseases: diabetes and deniabetes. Diabetes symptoms—which you probably experienced and ignored—include thirst, frequent urination, fatigue, and blurred vision.
Symptoms of deniabetes—denial of diabetes—include a refusal to admit that you have symptoms; an unwillingness to accept a diabetes diagnosis; and a lack of attention to the medical, dietary, exercise, and other recommendations your healthcare providers offer to help you manage the disease.
Unfortunately, denying you have diabetes won’t make it go away. In fact, if you don’t cure yourself of deniabetes, your diabetes is likely to get worse. If diabetes goes uncontrolled long enough it can lead to all kinds of complications that can have devastating effects on your eyes, kidneys, limbs and heart. The good news is that deniabetes is absolutely curable and diabetes itself is manageable. Once your deniabetes is managed, you can begin to manage your diabetes much more effectively.
Denial isn’t necessarily a bad thing and most people will experience a little denial after a diabetes diagnosis. Denial is a way to protect yourself from thoughts that are painful or uncomfortable. It can actually give you time to adjust to a stressful situation and think about making changes. Health experts describe denial as one of the stages of grief. After all, you are accepting a major loss—the loss of your “normal” life.