I was just browsing the TV channels and in one of those health programmes the guy was getting his swollen, red and ready to explode feet checked; they looked horrible, the paramedic women commented that 100s of people’s get their feet chopped off because of diabetes every week. You cannot avoid negativity surrounding diabetes even when trying to watch relaxing TV channels after hard day at work. In fact some of the statistics are horrific: The estimated diabetes prevalence for 2010 is 285 million and is expected to affect 438 million people by 2030. There are 2.6 million people who have been diagnosed with diabetes in the UK (2009). By 2025, there will be more than four million people with diabetes in the UK. It is estimated that up to one in 20 people in England has diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed). UK-wide, it is not quite one in 20. But when diabetes is not well managed, it is associated with serious complications including heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage and amputations leading to disability and premature mortality. Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death and disability in people with diabetes, accounting for 44 per cent of fatalities in people with Type 1 diabetes and 52 per cent in people with Type 2. Almost one in three people with Type 2 diabetes develops overt kidney disease.- Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in people of working age in the UK. It is estimated that there are 4,200 people in England who are blind due to diabetic retinopathy. This increases by 1,280 each year.- 100 people a week lose a toe, foot or lower limb due to diabetes. Up to 70 per cent of people die within five years of having an amputation as a result of diabetes.The emotional well being of people with diabetes is important and is integral to the overall health of an individual; coming to terms with diagnosis, the development of a complication, the side effects of medication, or dealing with the daily responsibility of self managing diabetes can take their toll on emotional well being. In some cases this can lead to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or phobias. The prevalence of depression is approximately twice as high in people with diabetes as it is in the general population. Babies of women with diabetes are three times as likely to die in their first months of life.- Diabetes is the fifth most common cause of death in the world. Life expectancy is reduced, on average, by more than 20 years in people with Type 1 diabetes. These figures in my opinion show how evidently badly managed diabetes is, as the number of people who suffer from diabetes-related illnesses is too high. Depsite the fact that NHS still spends 10% of budget on diabetes, which amounts to £286 per second and £173 million per week. I am really not sure if that money goes to proactive management of diabetes or reactive management of diabetes such as chopping off feet and removing damaged kidneys. (More statistics can be found //www.diabetes.org.uk/Documents/Reports/Diabetes_in_the_UK_2010.pdf )
Everyone seems to have an opinion about diabetes and if they hear you got it, they are on your case. I remember mentioning to one of my colleagues at work, every hour or so she was asking whether I was OK, and if she saw me eating chocolate, God forbid she was giving me an earful in front of everyone. She was driving me mental. I just wanted to tell her to leave me alone as she had not got a bloody clue about this illness. She might have meant well, but the last thing you need is someone on your case all the time and especially if they are not glued up how things work. It just does not feel helpful at all.
Diabetes can be a really scary illness; going blind, kidney dialysis, amputations, multiple organ failures, heart disease, depression and so on. It is an underlying condition of pretty much every horrible things that could happen to a human body. Even to think about them is depressing and already bringing my sugar levels up for sure :). It is very hard to control sugar levels because your body is quite mixed up, tired and you are getting different messages from different hormones. Unless you check quite often you do not know what the readings are at that moment of time. From my experience, the sugar readings can change rapidly from hour to hour. One minute it may show 16 and the next half an hour you can get an unexpected hypo. I have heard about something called Continuous Blood Monitoring but need to ask my doctor whether I can have it. Somethimes, NHS denies these types of new technologies as they are more expensive. I think I am going to buy it regardless, as it sounds like a must have item for diabetics. For a start, it means less pain on my fingers. My poor fingers have black spots all over them where I pricked them. Sometimes if you press them hard they start bleeding without pricking. How sad is that.The general understanding of diabetes is that you should not eat sugars and you need to give injections to yourself, but in reality it is a lot more than that. It affects everything in your life, including sleep patterns, what you eat, how you feel. Trying to explain, let’s say you are a car and you need petrol to continue and they give you a different type of petrol, so you maybe eventually reach your destination but it won’t be a pleasant journey. I never put the wrong petrol in my car but as I imagine it would be something like that, a broken car plodding along to reach its destination. Unfortunately, diabetes is an internal illness; if it was an external illness it would be something like a beaten up man going to work the next day, I bet people would be more sympathetic then. More than anything, being diabetic is boring and creates a lot of work. The health care system/doctors/nurses think that you have nothing else to do other than your diabetes and they keep calling you for more appointments, and in your head you are thinking ‘I am sure you won’t be able to help me but let’s try one more time’. It is also funny that they want you to record all your blood levels, something like a food diary, of which when you go see them, they barely look at 10 sec. I am not sure what they are hoping to find with 10-30 sec analysis, a cure for all your problems :). Unless you eat pretty much the same amount every time of the day and have similar emotions with similar exercise, how are they going to find a pattern just from basic sugar readings? It seems to be just pretending to be doing a good job, rather than actually doing it.
It is so boring to check your sugar levels 4-5 times a day, inject yourself 4-5 times a day and yet have crap/unexplained readings with high sugars most of the time. It feels like all the hard work you are doing is wasted and your life/sugar levels never can be perfect. It almost feels like a failure and you are not good enough to pass this impossible subject. I am not sure if it because I am depressed that I feel this way, but to be honest it feels more like a reality in my case. I think that with every chronic or serious illness, the emotional side of the things should not be ignored and I dare to suggest that every person diagnosed with serious conditions should also receive psychological therapy as well as the medications they may need to take until the day they die. It may not sound much having to do 4 or 5 times injection a day and finger pricking and keeping your food diary but when you think over the years, they will add up to 100,000 of injections or something like that. Please do the maths for me :)! I admire people who keep their sugar levels OK for most of the time and not sure how they manage it. Whether they are super-organised, educated or controlled, I just cannot get my head around it. In my case I feel that whatever I do, there is no way my sugar levels will be controlled or that I can fully understand them. Even the things supposed to be good for you like exercise; you don’t know how your body is going to react. Well let’s say you have some high sugar levels and you would think, if I go and do some walking they should get lower. Well it is not the case at all, sometimes, yes, it gets lower or even too low so you get a hypo and sometimes it gets even higher. Is it another hormone that caused this like adrenalin, or is it because I did not inject enough insulin, is it because I walked so much? There are 10 unknown equations every time you try to do something like you feel like doing it. You almost need to over think and over engineer every action you do. If not, you get random readings on your meter to remind you that you are a failure. One of my driving instructors, and I have had plenty of them over the years since it took me five times to pass, commented that he would kill himself rather than doing 4-5 times injection and living a life with something like diabetes. Well, he sounds harsh but, believe me you question yourself at times, is this how life is supposed to be. Is it my fault, is it my family’s fault, is the day going to ever come when they find a cure, why me and not someone else? What did I do so wrong that this happened to me? I remember, one of my diabetic friend remembers that he had a hypo at the park with his little daughter and he did not have anything to eat with him at that time. He remembers not having any energy to push the pram, getting warning signs from his body to find some food urgently. Diabetes can cause this kind of unexpected inconvenience and lack of energy even for 1.85cm strong man pushing his daughters pram. Always, carry some food with you just in case :). Fair enough, more than half of the world is hungry or sick and have other problems and I am not saying that diabetes is on top of the list but, what I am saying is that it is not something we should be de-prioritising, building more knowledge about diabetes will also help earlier diagnosis and better controlled sugar levels. It is not just diabetes, there are other illnesses like asthma. People just think ‘take a bit deeper breath then’. Well, it can be a bit more serious than that. Perhaps, we should give more education in schools on how to deal with diabetes or asthma but also recognise early symptoms in ourselves and help others who have to live with these conditions that they did not ask for. Also, students should get a general check up every year. Schools should be more practical, emphatic and improving people’s life for better surely? It is funny that, whenever I go to have a massage to relax, these massage ladies keep talking to me. It is hardly relaxing :). Anyway, this lady had a funny accent like she was from eastern Europe somewhere. She said she was English but had Polish neighbours when she was little. One English lady apparently asked her in the past as well and she said I am from here and the English lady asked slightly annoyed, no I meant originally and she said well, from here. It was funny though, she did not sound English at all, I found it hard to believe her as well :). She mentioned that her dad was a diabetic and he was in an out of the hospital all the time. She also remembers him being naughty as he did eat a lot of sweets. She remembers her mum and dad’s arguments and how horrible he was and she said she always associated horrible people with diabetes. I am not sure, if it can be the case. As a diabetic person your blood sugar levels affect your mood a lot, and if they are consistently high and you are feeling depressed, you almost feel like despising the people around you as they get on with their lives and you feel left behind with no care. Perhaps, diabetic people can be seen as horrible people by others or they can be horrible to people around them because they are not feeling that well inside. I wonder, what is the ratio between mental illnesses and diabetics? :) Because, I feel sometimes diabetes pushes you too to the very edge as well. Well, she also said that a strange thing about her dad was that he was also a cross dresser. Her mother knew this before they got married, but she thought she could change him, but obviously he did not change and with very badly controlled sugar levels in and out of the hospital all the time escalated to arguments, mood swings and a separation afterwards. She hardly remembers him, only the diabetic, selfish, horrible cross-dresser father. They have not seen each other since she was little. I wonder if he had controlled his sugar levels better whether he would have been a better, more supportive father to her and his family. Anyway, I love massages and I think it is really important to find some time and treat your body and get a human touch :). After the massage she also recommended an Aromatherapy product for relaxed deep bath and shower oil. She suggested rather than following the instructions just put some above your chest, underarms & ears and it knocks you out. It pretty much does that actually. Because of my sugar levels I find it quite difficult to go to sleep and relax and am hoping this aromatherapy will help. Apparently, in old days the stuff inside was used to relax patients before operations and I need something strong to keep me relaxed :).
