Letters From Home

One of the tech blogs I read on a regular basis mocked a gizmo today. The gizmo (a cuckoo clock that dispenses chocolate balls once an hour) deserves to be mocked. But the writer included a comment to the effect that eating too much chocolate could make a person diabetic.

It doesn’t work that way.

Obesity is one of the major triggers for Type 2 diabetes, and that’s undoubtedly the main reason why more and more people are diabetic. We’re all fatter. But diabetes isn’t caused by eating too much sugar. It’s caused by eating too much, period. Put a layer of fat around your middle and you might just be seeing your doctor for more than you bargained for.

I know this because I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes ten years ago. I’d had my suspicions for a while before that, but every time my doctor tested my blood sugar levels, it was done while I was fasting and my readings were in the normal range. It wasn’t till I had an appointment after lunch (that included a can of Pepsi) that I got an accurate reading–and the bad news.

What it’s really like

Diabetes is a progressive, pernicious disease. In the beginning, if the diagnosis is made early enough before the person’s blood sugar gets so high it requires major medical intervention, it is often possible to keep one’s blood sugar readings under control by a combination of diet and exercise, without medication. That’s the way it was for me for a few years (despite the best efforts of my boss to remain ignorant on the subject and buy party food that was mostly grease and sugar). Eventually I had to start taking medication that pushed my body to produce more insulin.

Of course, insulin can be considered a growth hormone and many people who get started on that kind of medication gain weight. I did. But my blood sugar was under control, at least for a while. Eventually that medication didn’t do the job and a second one was prescribed. That combination held the line for me until late last year.

Testing, testing

There’s a test called A1c that measures how high your blood sugar levels have been over about the last three months. The average reading is about 6%, give or take a few percentage points. Diabetics can go a little higher and still be considered within proper limits. My A1c was 8.4%. This was bad news indeed. But it didn’t come as much of a surprise because I had had increasing difficulty with way-too-high readings.

So, two months ago, I started injecting insulin. I know a lot of Type 2 diabetics see that as a treatment of last resort, and if they have to start on insulin they have somehow failed. I thought that way myself for quite a while. Now I know better.

The needles are not much thicker than a human hair, and less than half an inch long. The injections are about as close to completely painless as one could imagine. And best of all, the dosage is infinitely adjustable. With pills, you just don’t have that level of control. Besides, if you’re pushing your body to prodiuce more and more insulin, eventually your pancreas may just give up.

Insulin through history

Insulin was discovered early in the 20th century, and until recent years it was a byproduct of the slaughterhouse, refined from beef and pork pancreases. But drug manufacturers have since discovered how to make human insulin using genetically modified bacteria, and that was first marketed in 1982. The insulins we have today, produced by recombinant DNA, are nearly identical to what the human pancreas creates–they’re just modified a bit to allow for different times of effectiveness. The human insulins, not surprisingly, work better for most people and cause fewer problems. But there are some people for whom the animal based insulins are the best choice, and they are still available, but only under conditions where they are medically necessary. All insulin sold in the USA today is bio-engineered human.

Changes

I’m having to learn a few new things and think ahead. Originally I was just doing one injection at bedtime, but it wasn’t working quite well enough. Now I do one injection before breakfast and one before dinner (different insulin formulation than what I started with). I’ll have to be prepared to take a filled syringe with me when we go out to eat (ordered some cases from the Insulin Case Shoppe yesterday). I have to check my blood sugar more often while I’m making the adjustments in the dose. C’est la vie. I want to live.

I wish there were a good diabetes education program in a nutshell so the average person knew what was going on. Maybe I should write it myself.

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

My brothers and I are all baby boomers. So are all our spouses. Thus, we are a group of people whose parents grew up during the Depression.

That’s an era that produced lasting scars, in ways not always apparent. As most people realize, the deprivations of the Depression led to the excesses of the Fifties, because kids who grew up with nothing were now prosperous adults, the war was over and it was time, by golly, to enjoy not being deprived.

Why did I get to thinking about this today? Well, because one of the lasting effects of the Depression concerns food. Our parents were taught by their parents that Wasting Food was something akin to a capital crime. Why, those starving children in [name some exotic country halfway round the world] would be happy to finish what you ungrateful kids are refusing to finish! I/you put that food on your plate so you darn well better eat it! Clean your plate!

The result was that several generations of kids were trained from the get-go to keep eating till the plate was empty, regardless of whether their stomachs were full. And to Not Waste Food. Which might well be the reason why so many of us turned out to be fat adults.

Fortunately, my brothers and I weren’t treated to the extremes of Not Wasting Food Mania that some of our friends were, because my dad was an Olympic gold medal picky eater and we were a bunch of sharp, wiseass kids who weren’t shy about asking why we had to clean our plates when Dad didn’t. But my husband’s father would brook no such backtalk and by golly if you put it on your plate you had to eat it, period.

Thus, my husband, from long conditioning, believes at a visceral level (no pun intended) in Not Wasting Food. It pains him to toss out an unopened jar or can that’s past its expiration date. Even though he studied organic chemistry all the way through grad school, he refuses to believe that organic substances in sealed containers deteriorate in any way. And any cooked food that is placed in a storage container in the fridge is Still Good until it starts growing green and purple alien life.

Even though I do my best to put dates on the various zip-lock bags and containers in the fridge, if the stuff still “looks good” he is going to eat it, period. He likes taking leftovers to work for his lunches and for the most part that works out fine. Not always, though. Apparently he deemed something “still good” a couple days ago that wasn’t… and came home sick from work today.

Putting dates on stuff is not enough. I’m going to have to be the Fridge Police and throw things away myself. While he’s not looking, of course, lest he suffer gastric distress of a different kind.

photo credit: Jill - Glossy Veneer

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

I’ve been officially a diabetic for ten years now. Had my suspicions well before the official diagnosis, but in typical fashion I kept going in for fasting blood tests and I kept showing up as being within normal range. It wasn’t till I had a test after lunch that I got the bad news.

Diabetes is a cantankerous and capricious disease and it treats no two humans exactly the same. Some
people have to be put on insulin or oral medication immediately and struggle to find the right balance of medications and food. Some can go for years controlling it with just diet and exercise. I suspect most of us are somewhere in between.

I did fine with diet and exercise for quite a while. Unfortunately, I worked in an environment where my supervisors not only did not understand but made no effort to understand. My boss came from a culture where food and eating are very important and I think she took it personally when I said I couldn’t eat the food provided for departmental parties. I had no choice. It was greasy, salty, high in carbohydrates and sugar. I would try to find something reasonable, somewhere on the tables, but often I couldn’t.

One party, there wasn’t even any diet soda. I sat there with nothing until one of the supervisors unearthed a warm, dusty can of Diet Pepsi from somewhere. They didn’t even spring for a cold can from the vending machine. I think that was the nadir. After that, I really preferred to be assigned to work with the public while everyone else was partying.

I eventually went on medication. Like most people I went through a long period of adjustment, including a major change when I was taken off the beta blocker and other ineffective blood pressure meds by the first doctor in 20+ years who was able to figure out what was causing my blood pressure problems and do something about it.

I had about a year of good blood sugar control with just metformin, one of the most common drugs, but then something went flooie and my blood sugar levels started climbing. I asked for an appointment to the diabetes clinic, figuring it was time to give the specialists a shot at it.

And so, this week I started giving myself insulin injections at bedtime.

Many Type 2 diabetics have the idea that if they have to start taking insulin they have somehow failed. I didn’t, and don’t, see it that way. This gives me much more control over my own treatment. I get to adjust the dosage till I find what works. The doctors trust me to figure it out, and that in itself makes me feel very good.

The injections themselves are not painful in the least. I know we’ve all been conditioned to think that “shots” hurt, and I’ve certainly had plenty that did. I fretted a lot before giving myself that first injection. But insulin needles are not much thicker than a human hair and less than half an inch long and there literally is no pain. The anticipation was way worse than the actual event, like so much else in life.

So, here I am on my way to better control and better health. I feel positive. I feel good.

photo credit: gratiot

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

Yesterday when I was at the gym I was watching CNN while I was on the treadmill, just as Wolf & Co. were talking about the package mailed to NBC news by the Virginia killer. It certainly made those ten minutes go by in a flash.

When I got home, I turned on CNN to see if there were any further news (there wasn’t) so I started flipping channels to see if any of the local stations had anything more. Most of them were into the usual afternoon reruns, but Channel 9, which has more news programming than any other station, was into a news report, so I settled in to watch.

A few minutes later, they happened to do a report on plantar fasciitis. The doctor they consulted demonstrated a stretching exercise that’s supposed to help, and it’s pretty simple–just press your toes back, firmly, for a count of ten, and do that about ten times a day.

I’ve since tried it, and while it does provide some fairly immediate relief, my foot still generally feels like it’s mildly on fire most of the time and if I have to walk any distance at all I’m clearly going to have to start using a cane again. If the stretching exercise doesn’t help in a few days, I guess it’s time to get a referral to the podiatrist. Sigh.

But that kind of foot pain does sometimes change one’s mind about things. While I was watching TV I was also browsing through the day’s mail. And even though my daughter will probably disown me shortly thereafter, I’m considering buying…

Crocs.

Or maybe I could get away with Crocs deck shoes.

Or maybe I’d get a little less flak if I bought Crocs Mary Janes.

Sahalie offers the best selection of styles and colors, and although FootSmart promises free shipping on the regular Crocs, they charge ten bucks more for them to begin with.

Oh, what a world, what a world.

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

When the kids were little, we did not, as a general rule, allow candy in the house. For one thing, I didn’t want them to end up with lots of cavities like I did. And for another, F’zer and I didn’t think that consumption of mass quantities of candy was a good idea even with good teeth.

The results were predictable, though–on the holidays where the consumption of mass quantities of candy was traditional (Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween) the kids tended to go berserk eating the stuff. (No, we did not celebrate Easter in any other way than playing bunny with the products of Hershey, Brach, Mars et al.)

Of course, the fact that we were usually flat broke during those years meant a delicate balancing act between having candy available to be eaten On The Day and buying the same candy at half price or less The Day After. A kid who expects a stuffed Easter basket is not going to be happy with the same chocolate bunny a couple days later when Mom and Dad find it on the clearance shelves. In fact, the kid might just come roaring in on Easter morning to castigate the parental bunnies at the top of her lungs for gross Easter basket deficiencies.

We also gave out non-edible treats on Halloween for many years (and, believe it or not, got mostly favorable responses from the kids at the door) but this caused major grumbling from the kidlets in the house who then did not get mass quantities of leftover Halloween treats to snarf along with the bags full of stuff they’d collected on their own nightly rounds.

Even now when the kids are more or less old enough to be parents themselves, we still get poked at now and again for our Candy Rules of the past. I don’t suppose any parent really gets it right.

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites

I inherited a lot of things from my dad. Not much in the way of tangible goods, but a lot in terms of genetic heritage.

High blood pressure runs in my dad’s family. It might have killed his older sister (we’ll never know for sure because no autopsy was performed when she died suddenly at age 45). It certainly incapacitated my dad for many years–not so much the blood pressure itself but the multiple medications he took for it, that literally had him staggering.

I understand how he felt, since I’ve been taking multiple medications for it for years, and some of them left me feeling pretty staggery, too.

Recent revelations that taking beta blockers seems to increase the likelihood that a person will develop diabetes don’t encourage me, either, because I am the first known diabetic in the family. The idea that this might be an iatrogenic illness annoys me no end.

A bit over a week ago I came down with a pretty bad cold. Since I was feeling so crappy in general, I wasn’t eating properly, and thus tested my blood sugar more often. And thus found out that it was running noticeably higher than usual. When this continued throughout the week, I went to see my doctor. And she discovered that my blood pressure, which hasn’t been “normal” for over ten years, was running even higher than usual.

Thus, yet another blood pressure medication was added to my daily handful of pills. Over the course of the past 20 years or so, I’ve tried every class of bp medications there is, and none of them worked well and most of them caused side effects I couldn’t live with. This latest one is a calcium channel blocker. I forget what it was about calcium channel blockers that I couldn’t live with the last time my doctor tried prescribing one, but I know exactly why I’m not going to put up with this one much longer. It lists “flushing” as a side effect. No kidding. I’ve gone around looking like I fell asleep in a tanning booth since about an hour after I took the first pill.

My diabetes medications have also been doubled, and that, at least, seems to be having some effect. Of course, nausea is one of the predominant effects of increasing one’s dosage of metformin, but I suppose I can live with that a day or two. Having no appetite when your blood sugar is elevated isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But, like my dad, I’m getting weary of taking handfuls of pills every day. The doctor says, lose some weight, that should help. Alas, I took off 50 pounds about ten years ago and my blood pressure went up. This is not to say I couldn’t stand to lose another 25 or so, and I’m working on that, but as a cure for high blood pressure–I doubt it. Neither my dad nor his sister were ever fat a day in their lives.

It’s very, very discouraging. If I could get off the beta blocker, would my blood sugar control improve? I wanted to try that, but the doctor felt it would be too dangerous.

As the saying goes, some days you’re the dog, some days you’re the hydrant.

If you enjoy my posts, I hope you'll sign up for my

Submit this post to:

Hide Sites