Search Results

Last month, a friend of mine had to build a website for a class project, and the site focused on people with diabetes who had multiple health problems.  I was really struck by the title and slogan that she came up with for the project; it was "Diabetes Plus: because it's rarely just diabetes."

Those words rang true for me, as I know they do for many people, because I'm a person with type 2 diabetes, and I have several other health problems, too.

On top of diabetes, I live with congestive heart failure and related issues, obstructive sleep apnea, asthma, acid reflux, a hiatal hernia and other gastrointestinal issues, migraines, and sinus/allergy problems.  There may be something I'm forgetting, but you get the idea.

And there's an equally crazy list of medications that accompanies that list of health problems.  They are as follows:

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (7)

My father’s sister Margaret died of complications from diabetes at the age of 51.  It was an awful thing to watch.  The years between her fortieth birthday and her dying day were overfilled with pain.  She had issues with her toes, issues with her eyes, she had multiple strokes.  My father, a decorated Marine and police officer, held his little sister’s hand through too much heartache.  When she died, in a nursing home, too young and too sick for words, he cried.  

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (9)

The title reads "Cancer drugs halt type 1 diabetes in mice." My first response is: oh my gosh! How can this be??!??!! Then I read further. I can feel the emotions starting to get the best of me.

Do I break out in song? Do I start dancing around the room? Do I cry? What if this is it? What if this breakthrough is the one that we all have been striving for?

The article explains that research has shown two cancer drugs, Gleevec and Sutent, to halt type 1 diabetes occurrence in mice. It also says that up to 80 percent of the mice with type 1 diabetes went into remission from the drug. Eighty percent!

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (0)

"I want you to walk ahead of me in case I get stopped," I said to The Mr. We were standing in one of the "expert traveler" lines at the security checkpoint at LAX. Although I had been searched twice in my last three air travels, I thought I was free since I had gotten through security the last time without being searched.

It was particularly dark in this part of the airport. I was particularly emotional having dealt with a screaming No. 3 for about 45 minutes. We had been on vacation and she was completely off schedule and crabby. I had a feeling that I was going to get stopped coming through the security tent.

"I have an insulin pump," I said, holding my pump up for the screener to see. A mantra I had tried and not tried each time I went through security.

"OK, come on through," she said.

I beeped. I knew it.

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (0)

These are the standard dosing instructions we see on drugstore bottles of aspirin, acetominophen, and ibuprofen. "Take two [at the time]" is such a common instruction for medications that it's almost become a cultural joke. But if you go over to the drug manufacturer's site, or to a site like drugs.com, you'll find another story that may cause you to question the first. That story is the drug's activity curve.

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (0)

When you go to the doctor, do you go prepared with a list of questions for the doctor?  That was one of the questions during last weeks DSMA session on Twitter. 

I would say that about 95% of the time, I do go prepared with both a list of questions and a list of the medications that I'm currently taking.  And I do so because I have way too many medications to remember them all, and usually have a number of questions that either April or I want answered.

I've been asked a few times, "Why do you take a list of medications? Doesn't your doctor already know which you're taking?"

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (5)

I mentioned the other day that there were some issues with my health during my blogging hiatus, and I thought I should share a bit about what was going on during that time.

I've written previously about the trials and tribulations that I've had with oral medications; they've either worked great as far as blood glucose control is concerned but had horrible side effects that I couldn't handle, or they just didn't work well at all.  It's been an on again/off again struggle for the last couple of years and, unfortunately, I dealt with more of that during my time away.

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (2)

We spend much of our formative years looking for approval from parents, teachers, older siblings, and friends. We spend our teen years and early adult years looking for approval from (potential) spouses. A recent #dsma chat reminded me how much we, living with diabetes, still spend our lives searching for approval.

Rating (0) 0

Email this Comments (0)