By the time you read this post, I will be in another city, having spent five days at the annual conference of an academic organization I belong to. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I will learn a lot and make some new connections. I'll get to stay in a nice hotel and see some folks I really, really like. And I'll have some fun, which -- depending on how I do it -- is good for my mind and body.
But trips can be trippy (1960's speak for "complicated"). I'll never forget last year's conference. I had only been on insulin for four months, after having my diagnosis changed from Type 2 to Type 1.5 (the nickname my endocrinologist uses for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults or LADA for short). I had a clue by that time, but I was still definitely working out the kinks.
One thing I've learned after living for 69 years is that much of life seems to driven by routines. When I first started having the local daily newspaper delivered in the morning, for example, I didn't even know if I'd read it. I hit the ground running in the morning and I'm usually on the computer before I've digested my breakfast. But it didn't take long before reading the paper while I sipped my morning tea became a routine and that was two years ago. I wake up, make the bed, do some stretches, and open the door to pick up the paper. We're creatures of habit. Which can be a bad thing, but doesn't have to be.
Not long after my diagnosis in 2008, when I told my Diabetes Educator how I had dealt with a particular issue that week, she beamed at me brightly and said, "See there? You're already doing a great job of problem-solving!" For a minute, I felt like a four-year-old learning to tie her shoe. But I'd never heard the term before, so I asked her what it meant related to my new condition.
"Well, you know," she explained patiently. "A lot of different situations can come up on any given day when you have diabetes and you won't always have somebody right there to help you figure it out. So it's important for you to learn how to identify and respond to things yourself when you can. Problem-solving is the process of deciding how to address a particular situation to resolve it and maybe keep it from happening again."
