OT: Doctors may be hazardous to your (mental) health

My neighbor's daughter was diagnosed with type 1 at the age of 4. Managing her blood sugar levels with her varying activity and food intake levels was a nightmare.

They always carried these little glucose tablets to give her if her blood sugar levels took a sudden plunge, but those plunges were accompanied by irrational, combative behavior. On several occasions they literally had to wrestle her down, force them into her mouth and hold her mouth closed while she screamed and thrashed and fought.

As if that weren't bad enough, they also had to cope with the reactions of well-meaning bystanders, some of whom assumed they were abusing the child. Once, a gang of young men called 911 and threatened the girl's father with bodily harm if he didn't let her go. Fortunately, by that point she had absorbed enough sugar to abort the immediate crisis but he still had to explain himself to the cops and paramedics, showing them her medic alert bracelet, test kit and medications.

Reply to
Kathleen
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Joanne you can get an A1c test kit at Walmart. You follow instruction (very easy to do) and send the kit in and in less than a week they will email you the results. I did this one about 2 months ago. Rite Aid.com also has kits that give instant readings. This one is made by Bayer Aspirin. the Walmart kit was about 13 dollars. The Rite Aid one is 2 kits for 30 dollars. Karen in northern Ca

Reply to
Karen Officer

Yeah, I am totally with the expert advice part -- particularly the dietitian or diabetes educator part -- because every case is different. Just trying to say that there may be more than one option on how to manage his diabetes, and that sometimes eating carbs can be balanced with exercise.

Reply to
Samatha Hill -- take out TRASH

Indeed. Himself is Type 1, though, not Type 2. I think it's easier to manage Type 1 diabetes in most cases.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

Thanks, Karen.

Reply to
Pogonip

Amen to that.

Reply to
Samatha Hill -- take out TRASH

We carry glucose tablets, Glucogel, and a Gloucosamiine injection pack, plus cerial bars.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

IIRC type 2 can be managed with insulin also in extreme cases, but around here, at least, the doctors I type for prefer to see them managed on oral meds if possible.

Reply to
Samatha Hill -- take out TRASH

Type 1 is what we call juvenile diabetes, isn't it? The kind you're born with?

Reply to
Pogonip

He doesn't have diabetes. This is to prevent it.

Reply to
Pogonip

My DH carried "glucose tablets" (I'm sorry I don't remember the real name), and IF he was able to recognize the fact that he was slipping into hypoglycemia, he would take a tablet. Unfortunately, it's like expecting a drunk to be able to access whether or not he is capable of driving safely. By the time a hypoglycemic person needs to make that decision, his judgment is no longer capable of making it, because the brain is starved for glucose. DH actually got somewhat combative a couple of times, when *I* could see that he was headed into hypoglycemia and urged him to take a tablet or get some orange juice, he was sure he didn't need it, and argued with me. It's most dangerous if the diabetic is alone.

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"Of all the organs in the body, the brain depends on sugar (which we are now going to refer to as glucose) almost exclusively."

Reply to
BEI Design

Arg.

Type 1 is also called Insulin Dependent Diabetes. It is an auto-immune condition, where the body has destroyed its insulin producing cells (the delightfully-named Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas) and so produces no insulin. There may be a viral trigger - this is not yet proven. The very splendid Canadian doctors Banting and Best proved in the '20's that the condition was treatable by injecting insulin under the skin - before then it was a slow death sentence.

The condition used to be known as juvenile-onset diabetes, however it can manifest at any age and the name has been out of favour for some time. I contracted it at age 42. It does not manifest gradually.

Type 2 is a catch-all term, also called Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes, for any one of several conditions that weaken the bodies ability to react to or produce insulin. Treatment should be matched to the nature of the complaint i.e. which type of Type 2 you've got. Treatment can range from diet-only to insulin injection, pills and dietary restrictions. I'm not expert enough to say if it can be warded off or reversed.

Reply to
Alan Dicey

My dh always knows when he is beginning to get a little woozy, and as he is anxious to "live long and prosper", he is very good about doing what he ought to most of the time (I do occasionally have to remind him about food choices in a restaurant).

Why does Alan carry glucosamine, Kate? my dh uses that plus chondroitin every day for his arthritic fingers - and yes, it helps him a lot. It is pretty controversial though, on some people it has no effect, therefore folks either swear by it or at it.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans

Reply to
Olwyn.Mary

Kate, do you mean glucagon injection pack? The EMTs who came to my house when DH was in convulsions asked me where his glucagon was. I didn't know (then, but I sure learned later) what they were talking about. They injected glucagon directly into DH's gluteus maximus. He started coming around, but they took him up to the hospital overnight just to be safe.

After that episode, we went together (he finally agreed to let me be involved in his diabetes management) to the diabetes clinic run by our HMO, and I learned not only how to inject him, if needed with glucagon, but even gave myself a belly injection of sterile water to be sure I knew how to do it. ;-}

Fun!

Reply to
BEI Design

Thanks, Alan. I don't know a great deal about it, even though I have a cousin who is insulin dependent. It's not in my family, her paternal grandmother seems to be her connection and our mothers were sisters so it's in another line we don't share. I never really wanted to learn too much about it - I've already got enough stuff in my brain. ;-)

At this point what we have is an elevated glucose level in the blood, which has never been treated, although DH has been "cutting back" on sugar for a while. How far back is anybody's guess. I keep sugar-free snacks, etc., on hand, but I'm not his mother and I don't feed him or monitor his food intake. ;-) I gather that our doc wants to see if we can get the glucose level down without medication, just by severely limiting sugars and starches. If that doesn't result in an improvement, I'm sure we'll be moving on to some kind of medication. Suddenly I find myself married to a person with multiple prescriptions what with glaucoma and diverticulitis. At least the Lipitor is gone for now.

Reply to
Pogonip

When my mother moved to the back office at the clinic where she worked, she had to learn to give injections. She would sit in the living room, watching TV, working on her wrist movement with a syringe and an orange.

Reply to
Pogonip

That may well be your future. ;-}

I hope you realized that the most important sentence in my message was "...he finally agreed to let me be involved in his diabetes management..."

Trust me, this will NOT be something that affects only your DH. This will (if he actually *is* diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus) be life altering for you as well. And if you are fortunate, and your DH doesn't feel "life is sooo unfair!" (as mine did), it could be a very nice bonding experience for you both.

Or not....

DH thought he could test, give himself a "little extra" insulin, and then eat pretty much what he wanted. Not advisable, as the trip to the ER demonstrated. He did much better after that, we also saw a registered dietician, and DH FINALLY agreed to abide by the restrictions required to live successfully with Diabetes. And it was no longer "my fault"....

Reply to
BEI Design

That, I think, will be the least of my worries. When we first got the eye drops for the glaucoma, I did most of them, but he was determined to learn to do it himself, and he has. The one eye isn't such a problem, but he has so little sight in the other that he's doing it by touch and memory - lots of spilled drops! But he has gotten much better and this is especially good in light of the fact that he couldn't do it at all before, and didn't want to do it before the glaucoma. Which is ok if you only have eyedrops for four days every ten years or so. But when it's six times a day.....

We have an odd relationship that suits us both. There isn't a lot of "togetherness" which would drive both of us crazy. But he's my best friend, and I'm his. That doesn't mean we "share" much, other than cringing at the word "share." But we're there for each other in the clinches. Both of us are fiercely independent, though. LOL!

Obviously, I hope he can avoid medication, especially insulin, but if not, well, that's life, isn't it?

Reply to
Pogonip

We were also each other's best friend. :-)

We did share some things, and led lives in parallel universes in other areas.

Mine would have liked to avoid diabetes, prostate cancer, colo-rectal cancer and speeding igits...

Indeed it is.

Reply to
BEI Design

For some people, it can be reversed through losing weight and/or exercise. Not sure if it can for everybody, but I had an aunt who lost a whole bunch of weight and her type 2 went away.

Reply to
Samatha Hill -- take out TRASH

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