Really is it that bad being a Diabetic?

I was thinking today that this month has been rather overwhelming with it being Diabetes awareness month.

Everybody showing how great they all are for having survived and continuing the battle against diabetes. Yes, don't get me wrong we are all great, but do we really have it as bad as people make it out to be?

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder , so I decided to look into other Autoimmune disorders.
The definition of an Autoimmune disorder is that it occurs when the body's immune system attacks and destroys healthy body tissue by mistake. Did you even know that there are over 80 types of Autoimmune disorders including Type 1 Diabetes?

 The white blood cells in your body help protect against harmful substances e.g Viruses and toxins. These harmful substances contain antigens. When you have an autoimmune disorder your body does not distinguish between the healthy tissue and the antigens, as a result your body starts destroying the normal tissues.

Areas affected by autoimmune disorders include:

• Blood Vessels
• Connective tissues
• Endocrine Glands such as the thyroid and pancreas (My problem child.)
• Joints
• Muscles
• Red Blood Cells
• Skin

 Here are some Autoimmune Disorders:
(I really don't know many of these disorders and did you ever hear about a Sjorgen Syndrome awareness month?)

• Addisons Disease - Damage to the adrenal glands
• Celiac Disease -  inflammation in the small intestine, and damage in the lining. This prevents important components of food from being absorbed. 
• Graves' Disease - over activity of the thyroid gland
• Multiple Sclerosis -  affects the brain and spinal cord
• Sjogren syndrome-  glands that produce tears and saliva are destroyed. 
• Systemic lupus erthematosus - It can affect the skin, joints, kidneys, brain, and other organs. 
• Type 1 Diabetes

The most important thing I have noticed by taking a small look at these other disorders are that as a Diabetic unless I am uncontrolled and develop complications, I am not really experiencing daily pain as so many of these other disorders cause.

Maybe it is due to the higher amount of people living with Diabetes that we have more awareness months, more research being done and more medical advances taking place.

 These are some US statistics for Type 1 Diabetes:

Type 1 Diabetes Statistics

Number of Americans with T1D: as many as three million⁴
Number of children diagnosed with T1D in the U.S. each year: more than 15,000⁵
Number of adults diagnosed with T1D in the U.S. each year: more than 15,000⁵
Percentage of people in the U.S. living with T1D who are adults: 85%⁴
Percentage of people in the U.S. living with T1D who are children: 15%⁴
Increase in the prevalence of T1D in people under age 20 between 2001 and 2009: 23%⁶
Healthcare costs of T1D in the U.S. each year: $14.9 billion<sup>7

Statistics regarding some of these other diseases are not as great but:


Graves Disease - 5 in 10,000 people
Multiple Sclerosis -It's</sup> estimated that more than 400,000 people in the United States and about 2.5 million people around the world have MS. In the United States, about 200 new cases are diagnosed each week.
 Sjogren syndrome - 1 to 4 million people have the disease (This must me world wide.) (It is a rare disease.)


 We all deal with what we are given some days better than others, I must admit but if I had not said okay lets do this and I had decided that I was not going to inject regularly or eat correctly I would not have been sitting here now typing this blog or have the wonderful children and family that I do have.
Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.

Every one needs to keep their spirits up by reminding themselves every now and again that we really don't have it as bad as some people. 

I would like us all to remember in our thoughts today every one who suffers with any type of Autoimmune Disorder give them strength to live each day to the fullest however hard it might be.

Please take a look at this article about a teenager with MS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/21/kayla-montgomery-runner-teen-with-ms_n_6200754.html

It is 30 days today until Christmas, In my next blog I am going to write about my Christmas plans and how I intend on enjoying myself , during Christmas which is not always the healthiest time to be a T1D.

Bye for now

Kim

P.S. The guys at Insulcheck rock and I will also update you on our progress with me getting a better memory with the assistance of Insulcheck.

My Diabetic Diagnosis (Part 2)

Just to recap,this is where we left off in my last post about my Diabetic Diagnosis.

He told me to come back in a months time. (I thought he had gone off his rocker.) He did explain the reason so maybe he was not so crazy, he told me my Diabetes is going to go on Honeymoon. (Do I or Do I not have Diabetes?) He told me that I still had Diabetes but it will go away for awhile and then come back to stay FOREVER!...........

Here is a picture of the Hospital.

After the honeymoon I was admitted to the Rand Clinic. I remember that in my ward was one other Diabetic, whom relatives would come and visit, bringing with them food items, they once bought her Grapes and her next Blood Glucose reading was sky high and the nurses gave her hell for eating so many grapes. Funny things that you remember. Next to me in the ward was a lady that was suffering with depression and kept on crying even in the night. I remember on the first day or so while I was there that I reached to get something off the night stand and fell off the high hospital bed ouch.

I do not recall exact day spans it was 30 years ago but one morning the nurses came in and said now it is time to inject yourself. I don't know why but I had been expecting that I would first practice on an orange or a doll not go straight in. Number one thank you Dr D for not doing that it would have been of no use. I can say that because I just worked out maybe an estimate and not exact because when I started injecting I was not on 4 injections a day but 365 days a year x 4 x 30 = 43.800 times that I have injected myself since then. It feels like way more times actually. Those where the antiquated days of using a vial and a syringe. You had to flick away the air pockets in the syringe with your finger. My night time injection I had to use 2 vials and self mix my medication in my syringe, wow we have advanced. Thank you Nova Nordisk for the disposable pen and many other items you have developed to make life a little less difficult.

I can also remember in the beginning having a blood glucose monitor that came with a smaller strip attachment that you could replace the original with and then take each strip and use another device and a craft knife to cut the test strips in half. That sounds more than crazy now.

My Mum phoned the hospital to talk to me that day and tell me when she would be there to visit and the first thing I said was I have just done my first injection. She sounded a bit shocked, her child was not crying or sounding upset, I actually was quite proud of myself. This was the way it was meant to be, if the nurse had tried to inject me I would have been upset, If my Mother had tried to inject me I would have screamed blue murder, but I did it myself and I was way chuffed. I hear you saying didn't it hurt, to be honest falling off the bed hurt way more.

They had to work out a dosage for me of the insulin and then I was discharged to go home and start my journey as a Diabetic.

Just as a small footnote: This morning I could not remember if I had injected myself, not the first time I have forgot. My family are used to me saying did you see me inject myself.  I suppose that it has become as habitual as brushing your teeth you are thinking about other things and you forget. Unfortunately you don't have the minty fresh breath to remind you afterwards. I have often said to Mr.P that there should be a device to tell you when last you injected. I went to collect my insulin from Dr.X today and I was looking at a Diabetic magazine in the waiting room and I found the devise I have been looking for all these years, purely by accident. I need to still do more research as on line you can only buy in pounds and then it needs to be sent to RSA from the UK and our postal service has been on strike for roughly 6 months. This is pure genius and with comments like "the best part about it is the simplicity of it." on their Facebook page. I am definitely going to add this device to my essentials shopping list. Ha just remembered my brother in law is coming out from the UK in December maybe I can get a personal delivery man.

This is their video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxLvbMK2c38

And their Website:

 http://www.insulcheck.com/

  

This is the simple little gadget.

Cortisone the drug with the side effect I want to kick in the ass.(Final version)

This weekend I have been having a terrible cough that only seems to be getting worse.

I know the side effects of taking Cortisone being a Diabetic and sometimes I have been prescribed these but never used them so I had some Cortisone tablets on hand this weekend. Some other Dr told me I had to be dying before he gave me Cortisone so that kind of stuck with me.

I could not sleep, I could not eat or basically do anything with out coughing.

On Sunday morning my Husband now playing the part of Dr. P said I should take the dreaded Cortisone. I think he was trying to shut me up, but when I asked very sweetly what about my blood sugars he said we would just have to monitor them better.

I looked at the label on the tablets and it said 2 tablets 3 times a day.  Very well that seems a bit high but it was prescribed to me with full knowledge of my Diabetes.

I took two with breakfast ,two with lunch and two with dinner:

These where my readings and I was still coughing but maybe not as bad:
7.2 mmol/l (130 mg/dl)before breakfast
7.2 mmol/l (130 mg/dl) before lunch
3.9 mmol/l (70 mg/dl) before supper

My reaction when I went to bed was (Oh these are not too bad for me)

This Morning before breakfast my reading was 15.1 mmol/l (272 mg/dl) what the hell you got to be joking (I was still coughing, not as bad I have to admit.)
I took 20 units of short acting insulin with my Breakfast.
At 10:25am this had only brought my blood sugar down to 8.2 mmol/l (148 mg/dl)
Update - 9.7 mmol/l (175 mg/dl) Before Lunch - Injected 15 units short acting for something I would have normally injected 11 units.
Update - Before I left work - 5.4 mmol/l (97 mg/dl) Looking better still coughing though.
 

This side effect is not widely shown on the internet but after many clicks I did find this:
 " If you have diabetes prior to starting on oral corticosteroids, you need to be aware that your blood glucose levels may rise whilst you are taking steroids. This is more likely to be the case if you are taking steroids orally."

How do I know about the side effects of Cortisone , you may ask.

 When I was pregnant with my first born child, my Obstetrician told me he was going to climb Kilimanjaro a week before I was scheduled to go into hospital and have my C Section, He said don't worry you will be fine and I do have a locum on duty, I believed him so I smiled and waved him goodbye.

I think it must have been the day he flew out of Johannesburg, I swell up like a balloon, My husband and parents in law took me for dinner at Er Buco restaurant very yummy food in Linksfield Johannesburg.  Despite the wonderful comforting Italian food my ankles, wrists, nearly everything swelled up.

We left the restaurant while I was still salivating over the Tiramisu in the display cabinet and went to the hospital.

They plugged me on to machines and we waited for the doctor who seemed to take forever to arrive.(Bloody Locum.) to cut a long story short this Doctor breezed in and I do not recall him even looking at my file, he told the nurses to give me Cortisone for the babies lungs as a precautionary method and then I could go home.

The next morning when I tested my blood sugar it was something like 25. I found out later that this was due to the Cortisone and I probably did not need to have had it.

 I went in for a C-Section with this Locum Doctor.

Out of the 6 Mothers and myself that had a C-section while our Doctor was climbing Kilimanjaro probably only 1% of us where a really emergency that could not have wait to the next week,
when our chosen fantastic Dr who was fully aware of all our other problems was back in Johannesburg.

So that is how I got to know about the effects of Cortisone on a Diabetic.

I have stopped taking the Cortisone and the question is how long will it take to get my blood sugar under control again and how long will it take to get rid of the cough?

Time will tell, I will update this post with the readings and symptoms regularly until I am all fixed.

Bye for now,

Kim

 My conclusion- 
1. If you are a Diabetic go to the Doctor when you get sick , even if your medical savings have finished and you think you are a super hero, you are still after all a Diabetic that puts you into a higher risk group.
2. Do not take oral cortisone , firstly you will not take it for the full 5 days they recommend as you will see the high blood sugars and eliminate what is causing them. (That is what we are trained to do.)
Secondly having Diabetes and an infection and taking medication that ups your blood sugar is not recommended. If there is no other alternative ask to be hospitalized so you have medical help.
3. If your doctor wants to give you oral Cortisone question it , maybe they can give you inhaled cortisone for your lungs that does not effect the blood sugar.  

Keep well and have a great weekend I have an active weekend with a not so healthy kids party to enjoy. My youngest son is turning 8.
 
 

The Low GI Diet

Just a quick post to get your mind thinking about the Low GI diet. I found this in Anthony Worral Thompson's GI Diet cookbook.
"Carbohydrates provide 3.75 calories per gram, protein 4 calories per gram and fat 9 calories per gram. Alcohol, if taken, provides 7 calories per gram. It is therefore clear that a diet high in starchy carbohydrates can be low in calories. Add to this carbohydrates with a low GI and you have a really satisfying way of eating."
I am a firm believer of following a low GI diet to assist in controlling your Diabetes. It also helps my non Diabetic kids with sustained energy and I am sure it will assist most people wanting to eat more healthy. My go to cookbooks are the range of books Called "Eating for sustained Energy" by local writers Gabi Steenkamp and Liesbet Delport as well as Anthony's book mentioned above that I use for a bit of variation. Patrick Holford's "The Holford Low GL Diet" is a fantastic resource book for more information. It is really easy to follow this diet with no cookbooks at all, this I will demonstrate in a future post.

My question to you is can it be sustainable long term to eliminate a whole food group?

Don't forget to get your Blood Glucose tested for Diabetes Awareness month.