My Doctor Fired Me as a Patient
My doctor fired me as a patient, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me:
A few years ago, I stopped caring. Diabetes to me was the ender of my dreams. I wanted to join the Navy and found out that being a person with diabetes made that impossible. I wanted to be a filmmaker and learned that that wasn’t going to get me the medical insurance that I needed. I was inspired at one time to be a cross country cyclist, but could never get enough time off of work to train. Frustrated and discouraged, I failed to see the point of taking care of myself anymore. I started missing appointments with my endocrinologist because I didn’t want to be lectured about how I wasn’t managing my diabetes very well. And the worse my diabetes got, the more unhappy I was at home and at work.
Eventually the day came when I ran out of insulin and had no refills left. My A1c was 12 percent this time around. I had no other choice but to schedule an appointment with my endocrinologist, despite my hesitation. While I waited to be seen by the physician’s assistant for my usual scolding, I had a bad feeling about this visit. Instead of the PA, my doctor, who will remain nameless, walked in.
It was the FIRST time that I had seen him since my very first appointment in his office, years ago. He came in to tell me that his office had a meeting about my behavior and what they were going to do with me. My doctor said between my lack of checking my blood sugar, proper use of my pump and missing several appointments, I was not only killing myself, but killing everyone in that office. I didn’t know that my numbers meant putting the office at risk of losing their funding.
My doctor also said that if I continued down the path I was headed, that I would eventually end up in one of his clinics, blind and with amputated limbs. He then pulled out a mirror from one of the cabinet drawers and asked, “Have you used one of these before? Because you need to take a good, long look at yourself.”
I started to cry. Then the final blow happened. My doctor, in the calmest and most direct voice said to me, “I think you need to find care elsewhere. Maybe your primary care physician?” I was fired. At that point, my long, fall down began. I got depressed, didn’t see the point of my job anymore and quit. I struggled with applying for and dealing with county medical services to get my insulin.
To sustain myself, I took on more camera operating and video editing work, and grew my video production company, Omnistories Event Cinematography. Even though I was doing what I loved, I still wasn’t taking stellar care of my blood sugars. My A1c readings were still in the 8% range. That’s when diabetes struck me pretty hard. I started experiencing signs of diabetic retinopathy. Blurred vision was very difficult for me to deal with because I was a cinematographer, and cinematographers need good vision. I feared that I was going blind, but after a series of eye laser treatments, my eye sight stabilized.
Once I finally got over the fear and anxiety, I made a commitment to not fulfill the destiny that my ex-endocrinologist had prophesized. Out of that commitment came my choice to get on the bicycle. From riding my bicycle, came a renewed vow to ride my bike cross-country. I figured, if I set a huge goal that would require the perfect alignment of activity and diet, then taking care of my diabetes would come automatically.
My current goal now is to ride my bicycle 600+ from San Diego’s Olympic Training Center to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. I’m on an insulin pump and have a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that connects to my mobile phone. My new endocrinologist is working closely with me on how to make sure I can avoid severe hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia while riding my bike. Excited for this new goal, I shared it with a few of my friends, family and fellow filmmakers. Now we are working on a documentary called Two Wheels and a Dream, which will be a feature length film that will follow me on my journey up the California coast to conquer my diabetes. It is a film that we hope will inspire many other people living with diabetes, to make their own breakthrough.
Today, I am living out the dreams that I initially had to give up. I even found a way to combine two of my passions: cycling and filmmaking. And while I still can’t join the Navy, I hope the message and lesson from my documentary will be a stand and fight for the freedom of people with diabetes everywhere. So thank you to my ex-Doctor Nameless. The beautiful life I’m creating is rooted in your tough love. My last A1c reading was 7.2%, and I’m on track to be in the 6% range after my first cross-country journey.
Read Bouncing Back and Moving Forward—Diabetes Burnout by Kimberly Goodson.
