Sometimes a thought will come to you and at other times you are left thinking. This time the thought is there, but how to present it is wanting. This has to be easier, but I have not found it.
On a few of the diabetes forums that I participate, quite a few people are asking good and sensible questions. When they receive advice from people's experiences, they seem to ignore it and move on to other topics. Others join several forums as the same time and ask the same question then select the forum that gives what is desired to continue the discussion on. I have seen this so often that you can almost tell what they are looking for.
When they don't get the answers they are looking for, they head off to other diabetes forums or discussion groups to test their question. The last one that came across this way was a question about the necessity of exercise. Three of the diabetes forums were very pro-exercise and very emphatic about it. The fourth was pro-exercise, but only with two answers.
So I continued to watch a couple of discussion boards and my wife watched a Facebook group. Sure enough they showed up on one of the boards and Facebook. The discussion board basically said exercise is necessary if they were medically able.
What was interesting was the Facebook group's answer. Three people jumped right in with promotions for natural remedies and said exercise was not necessary. The person responded that finally he had found a group that felt like he did about exercise. The number of promotions of natural remedies was immediate and almost 15 people had promotions up in less than an hour. The person thanked them and has not been seen since.
This is somewhat typical of some people. They are there for one reason, to find someone that agrees with what they want to hear that will give them justification for their attitudes about diabetes. Many of the regular members and participants in the forums can see right through these masked attempts to find information to let them off the hook. They normally answer with the right advice and will not back down.
The other problem I am having is how to deal with certain Certified Diabetes Educators (CDE's). I have been surprised lately at the number of inflexible CDE's that I have met. I made a comment about the new CDE position paper that I wrote about here, and I was told by a CDE that it would not be enforced in her office. I asked why not and was told that because it went against the American Diabetes Association (ADA) guidelines. I asked guidelines for what year and was told the general guidelines.
I could see that she was so rigid in her beliefs that further discussion was going to be futile. This is totally discouraging for me, but I know that some of the professionals get stuck in their beliefs and are unwilling to change. A lot like many people that get comfortable and resistant to change. This is why I probably get surprised as I have had to learn to change. This is something that diabetes forces on you.
Referring to people who ask the same question until they get the answer they want. I worked at a university in the College of Education. Our associate dean was talking with an education student about classes and I heard her say after talking with the student a considerable length of time something like this - I know this is not the answer you want to hear, but this is the way it has to be.
ReplyDeleteNow I know this is not the answer to every question, but as with any disease, a lot of us do as you indicated - keep looking until we find the answer we agree with. It may not be the best one, but it's the one we wanted to hear.
This must be something in the way my parents taught me. They instilled in me the desire for the truth, not what I always wanted, but they said that was better in the long run. They taught me to weigh the pros and cons of what I was told and then to consider all aspects and facts before I made a decision.
ReplyDeleteNot that I have always done that, but it has served me well and taught me that if I look for the answer I want that I may be disappointed in the outcome.
The one time this is not true was when I asked for my wife to marry me.