My first hate mail
Posted Aug 2nd 2007 5:55AM by Allie Beatty
Filed under: Type 1, Childhood, Blogs, Allie Beatty, Support, Personalities
A little over 2 weeks ago I posted something about diabulemia on site where diabetics exchange their feelings, frustrations, and experiences with the disease. Two Type 1 diabetic women took the time to write me a very thoughtful hate mail. Hate is a strong word but these are some strong accusations. For starters, they said, "There ain't no such word as diabulemia. It's called diabetic stupidity." That is cut directly from the email, and as you can see - it was written with an arrogant disregard for the 450,000 people suffering from this serious condition.
I understand strong words come from passion. An email with the subject title "There's type 1, and then there are fools with type 1" could only have been composed with hateful passion. Within the passionate lines of this email were statements like "Insulin shock therapy was used in mental institutions (where you belong)." Not exactly nice words to come from a teacher - but again, the words were incensed with passion. Good, bad or ugly - feedback is terribly important to me because it conveys what matters to you. Knowing is half the battle.
By logging my experiences with diabetes on the web, these hate mailers refer to me as "You fool" for exercising my Freedom of Speech (First Amendment). To this I add -- thank goodness for the Freedom of Information Act. If I'm a Fool for sharing my experience with overcoming diabulemia and trying to lend consoling advice to others struggling with it - I'm a damn proud Fool! Hate on, haters!
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1. I think there are far more constructive ways to express an opinion, but consider the source (and what they wrote)!
I do question the validity of the published estimates that diabulemia supposedly impacts 450,000 patients, especially considering the fact that we really lack reliable numbers on how many people have type 1 diabetes because the CDC does not collect information on diabetes type. If we assume that 1.1 million people have type 1 to begin with, that suggests that 40% also suffer diabulemia, which I find unbelievable! But whatever the figure, I think there are more constructive ways to disagree on a subject, don't you?
Posted at 8:22AM on Aug 2nd 2007 by Scott