I saw a great saying on-line recently.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad.
Sometimes we know things but do we put into practice what we know? Are we more interested in defending a stance than opening up our minds and our hearts to learn something by really thinking about what someone else states.
I saw a discussion recently and I won’t go into specifics because my goal is not to re-ignite the discussion. But as I followed the thread of a few of the discussions; it left the point of the original idea and turned into a ‘taking sides’ and ‘I know what is right for my child’.
Now this is true. We do know what is right for our child but do we know what we do not know? We have made many decisions for our two kids with diabetes in their lives and in as much as we weigh all discussion points, we also must open our minds in trying to know what we don’t know. Otherwise we would never grow and their care would never adjust to the better tools that are both out there and are yet to come.
Case in point and I share this with you with the understanding that I’m not opening up a discussion but rather showing a process in my life.
Since the first time I heard a presentation on the artificial pancreas I, quite frankly, have never been a fan. Logically and in practicality it just did not make sense to me that it could work as stated. I stayed out of the many discussions of so many swearing that it is the best thing since insulin, and that may very well be true, but I did not know enough about it to discuss. I just knew in my mind that the delay and absorption of insulin was too delayed and if people can not presently dispense insulin based on a cgm (legally, anyway), and utilizing just insulin instead of utilizing glucagon also…..well…all of it just did not add up, to me. I thought that it might be interesting, but not yet. When I first heard about it, it was like hearing research news in a mouse; could be good, but we’ll see.
But I kept an open mind. I thought what I was hearing was ‘a step’, but not the answer. Steps are important in science and it surely was a first step. I investigated what one was researching and another and another….but all in the same pattern, to me.
Sometimes when we hear what we think we are hearing, we miss anything new. So I always try to go to the source. And that is important. If you want to know something, go to the source, weigh what you hear and decide for YOU. Do not discuss someone’s opinion because you think they know. If you do not know…..find out. I have found out more times than less, that people do not REALLY know, they know a little and relay only what they know. Always go to the source and find out.
Back to the artificial/bionic pancreas. So during my journey, my friend Marie keeps telling me about this guy named Ed Damiano and his bionic pancreas (as he calls it). When I had the opportunity to hear Ed, I went and heard with an open mind. I was stubborn at first because I ‘thought’ I had heard enough. But I went to hear from the source.
What I learned, to me, is that Ed has the real deal. The first time I heard of anything utilizing both insulin and glucagon (although now I understand there are more working toward that end).
My point here is not about the AP or the Bionic Pancreas. My point is that if I listened to only the people who thought as I did, I would have shut my mind forever. When I had the chance, I went to the source and I learned a ton.
Paraphrasing the German writer (among other things) Goethe, one can not argue the point of someone elses experience unless they have actually experienced the same thing.
So the point being, if you do not know something, learn it. Experience it for yourself. If it is a pump, an insulin, a CGM, what to do, what not to do, a doc, an endo, and on and on……never take at face value what someone tells you. Whether it is about you, your child, something you heard, or anything else for that matter.
Always…….go to the source and seek knowledge. For it is knowledge that is the best caretaker of all of us and it is wisdom that tells us how to use it.
I am a diabetes dad.
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