Changes

Today we are asked to talk about changes we may reflect back that you or your loved one has seen or been through since being diagnosed with diabetes.  This is my Thursday blog post for #DBLOG week.  You can see all of today’s posts at the link provided below.

The truth is I think I have been a person with diabetes nearly my entire life. While I was diagnosed 42 years ago (at 17) my mom was diagnosed I was around 5 years old and we all became people with diabetes. The reason was that we (my Mother, Father and I) were all involved in caring for mom’s diabetes.

Decisions

The first and in some ways important decision my parents made was if mom would use insulin or some nondescript diet being proposed by a guy who said he was a doctor. Who knows if he was or not, but he offered my parents the proverbial cure for my mother’s diabetes if only she would buy products and follow a strict (scientifically formulated of course) diet. My parents debated this offer for several days My father saw the chance to ‘cure’ the woman he loved so much, and my mother saw a quack cure like those her family had been told of years before when her sister was diagnosed with diabetes. After several days my mom finally stopped the conversation and I will never forget her words. She said ’Larry (my dad’s name) I will use insulin, it is saving lives and it will save mine’. The discussion was over. I remember the silence in the room and my dad saying well we better your prescription then.

Today I suppose families debate things like this, but I do not know many. Today insulin is a universally accepted product to control the blood sugar of people with type 1 diabetes. Today our insulin has gotten so much better, it is a safer more naturally behaving product and while there are still issues, I rarely find type 1 deniers these days.

Convergence

Which brings me to the second change I want to highlight. That is the convergence of treatments for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. I never dreamed back in 1974 that someday I would see people with type 2 diabetes routinely using insulin. At the time of my diagnosis doctors drew a line that separated different types of diabetes. Type 1’s got insulin, type 2’s were given many drugs and treatments to prevent the progression of the disease. If you were a type 2 and eventually were placed on insulin you were termed a failure for not controlling your disease. I can recall with astounding regularity people saying oh his diabetes got worse he uses insulin now. Implying, to me (the 6 year old), that my mother didn’t have a chance. In fact her diabetes was so bad she went from ok to the worst in one doctor’s visit. I thought how could that happen? Of course all of that is rubbish. My mom was not a good or bad diabetic, nor are the hundreds of type 2 diabetes who use insulin. We are just people, no more or less.

Along this same topic, I can recall when the issue for diabetics was to keep glucose out of urine. We had urine sticks to test sugar overflow, and we tried so hard to keep our urine tests at less than 1+ (I know only us old timers understand the term 1+) but it was a measure of high blood sugar. (4+ was the worst). Today we have drugs on the market to coax glucose into our urine so it will not show up in our blood sugar, therefore requiring less insulin production. Wow talk about a sea shift in how we view glucose waste in our urine. All those lectures and threats from my doctor and those crazy clinistix tests just make me cringe. My goodness in my house the 60’s and much of the 70’s was spent trying to keep glucose out of urine, now we take drugs to divert it to our urine.

Life

And that brings me to the fourth change I have seen in these 42 years. People with diabetes are no longer given years to live, they are instead given lifetimes to manage. My mom passed from diabetes complications when she was 48. She had the disease around 25 years and she could not have a second child she wanted so badly, (it was the 1960’s). In those days we put our insulin in and prayed it worked. We had no blood tests or short acting insulin (our shortest peaked in 4 hours) so we sort of went with the flow.

Yes there have been many changes, so many I could never report them all. But one thing has never changed. Those of us who have diabetes strive for two things. Time and quality of life. Those have always been what we really want. I know I want more time with my family, and I want the highest quality of life. See somethings never change. How we get there might change, but the object of our efforts will never change. At least not in my lifetime.

#DBLOG posts about change

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