It’s okay if you didn’t send flowers or a card; just as long as you also skipped the chocolates. Today is World Diabetes Day, so reach for your sweetened-with-corn-syrup soft drink and offer a toast to those whose research will, hopefully, sooner rather than later, result in a cure. “Act today to change tomorrow” as it says on their website-a good perspective for any number of concerns and issues, health and otherwise.
I have dim memories as a kid of Gramma Kenny and her
“sugars” so I’m thinking that’s a contributing factor to how I came by my Type 2 diabetes (coupled with
some of the most thoughtless decisions on self-care any one has ever made) and now
wonder/worry not only about my siblings and what their futures hold (being
first-born isn’t always the perk it’s advertised to be) but also about our two
children. I’d have preferred they inherited my sincere smile (and my
dancing bear) but genetics being what they are, the deck is loaded
and not necessarily in their favor.
I’m grateful to not be Bret Michaels who has had an hellacious time in
recent weeks as a result of his Type 1 diabetes, not only because I look lousy
with a headband (and I (still) have a
reasonable amount of hair which I’m thinking only one of us can say) but
because the impact of Type 1 on your life sets you up for so many other
problems far more critically and profoundly than Type 2 where there’s already a
crowd of trouble gathered.
My doctors make frowny faces when we (mostly them, I just
show up) prepare for surgery, these days usually for out of warranty work, because any type of diabetes compounds
and confounds the healing process and adds a degree of difficulty to the level
of effort required to get and stay well.
In addition to kidney problems, and other organs like the
liver and most especially the pancreas (where insulin is produced, or isn’t,
hence the diabetes) along with near-crippling nerve pain in your extremities
and failing vision, diabetes breaks down your muscle mass and leaves you more
susceptible to a family of auto-immune diseases whose names (believe me) you
do not want to ever need to learn.
Does it take more than a day to reform and reverse
behavior? Speaking from experience, yeah it does but if change you must then
change you can especially if the alternative is a premature demise. There’s a
reason death and diabetes both begin with the fourth letter of our alphabet.
I’m not good for much else (okay, scaring birds off
the front lawn) so I’ll be your cautionary tale until you look around and
discover just how many diabetics, or those who are becoming one, you already know. Before I step off the soap box (I appreciate
the rope but doubt that light fixture will hold my weight), I want to allow Dr.
Eric Berg to have the last word. Just make sure it’s not yours.
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