managing my own and family member’s diabetes
so I’ve been having an incredibly difficult time lately. I was kicked out of my childhood home in August and my ex dumped me on the same day, lost my health insurance for a couple of months, my job is losing funding and I just can’t catch a break.
Because I was kicked out I had to move into my grandparents house, with my grandfather who is also insulin dependent. He has issues with his memory and had began falling due to lack of diabetes care. And now it’s mostly been dumped onto me to handle it. We’re having a family meeting to get me more support managing it (I live with my uncles, gma, gpa) but even then it’s so overwhelming and I haven’t even been able to take care of my own glucose levels. I’ve done days without even checking anything because im just so burnt out.
Realistically it’s not a lot to help my grandpa. It’s just a couple injections a day, pills, and changing out sensors. But I seem to be the only one in the household who understands how serious this is. And it’s just not fair that im having to manage not only my own diabetes but my grandfathers too. I keep telling my family that we really need to get some sort of professional help, that it’s too much for any one person to handle, and they say they understand but we can’t afford it. And that they’re also making sacrifices. (some of them genuinely have but we really could be getting more support. I’m the only one of the grandkids who even know about any of this going on) My glucose levels have been consistently 300+ and I can’t even take care of it because I need to take care of my grandpa first. I have adhd in the first place so it’s already so difficult to remember my own medications and keep track of my own things. And now they want me to keep track of his medications and let people know when his sensors, pen needles, insulin, pills, etc are all running out. I don’t understand why it’s been mostly on me. Supposedly this family meeting is going to make it less on me but with how my home is (im the only girl here) I really doubt it’s going to help much. But I don’t know. I’ve been trying to drill it into them that it’s just too much for me but they just pretty much say “im sorry but that’s how it is” and it’s just not fair and I really just need to get it out there. I’m debating moving out just so I can focus on myself but I don’t have a good paying job and I really just don’t know what to do at this point. I feel helpless. I’m already so burnt out from my own medications and doctors appointments. I don’t know what to do. I can’t just not help my grandpa. He’ll get worse again. And they keep telling me that it’s just for the time being but that’s not true. It’s going to be like this, even get worse, until my grandpa dies. Which hopefully won’t be for a while. And I don’t want to be in charge of all this indefinitely. I don’t know what to do. I feel like im yelling into a void and just idk. It’s not fair. I don’t know how I can get them to understand that all of these things we’ve been doing for my grandpa, I also have to do for myself, and it’s a lot. I don’t know what the mental block is. I really want to move out, and then I get this guilty feeling that I’ll be letting my grandpa get sick, or leaving them behind or I don’t know. I don’t think they’ll even take care of him properly if I did leave. I went on vacation and when I came back it was a mess. Anyways thank you all for reading this. I’m just so incredibly burnt out.