What is Diabetes?

My wife has type two diabetes. We don't have any special insurance for diabetics. Nor do we have specialized life insurance for diabetics. So now we are busy managing diabetes. What is diabetes? It has to do with insulin and blood sugar. When the body doesn't produce enough insulin or absorb enough insulin at the cellular level, the blood sugar remains higher than it should, and the diabetic person feels hungry because the cells can't get their food (sugar). This extra sugar remaining in the blood thickens the blood just like putting corn syrup into the blood. This thickened blood is what causes all the diabetic neuropathy and other diabetic related problems and diabetic symptoms. These can include loosing the circulation in the feet (leading ultimately to gangrene) and blindness because the blood cannot circulate through the tiny blood vessels of the eye and the eyes tissues die. The same thing can happen to almost all the organs including the kidneys, liver, heart, etc. Diabetes is not fun.

My wife is constantly having to test her blood level using the specialized diabetic testing supplies that we have. This involves her poking a lance into her finger and getting a drop of blood on a test strip which is placed into a special machine that in 30 seconds tells her what her blood sugar is. If it is above 125 she has to inject insulin into the muscles of her arms, legs or belly. The amount of insulin she injects depends on how high her blood sugar reading is: the higher the reading, the more insulin she must inject. This additional insulin helps the body absorb the blood sugar and thins out the blood so it can carry oxygen to all parts of the body.

Type II diabetes is usually the result of being overweight. My wife is very obese and needs desperately to lose weight. But having diabetes complicates the issue considerably. She has to be careful not to go too long before eating or her blood sugar level can drop too low and she could slip into a diabetic coma. Fortunately this has never happened.

So far we have opted against having an insulin pump because my wife's blood sugar level varies widely (depending on what my wife eats.) Ideally, she would be on a special diabetic diet.

Don't eat a lot of sugar and get diabetes.

David A. Youngs
http://polybids.blogspot.com/
polybids@yahoo.com