There have been a couple of recent threads on LinkedIn regarding the definition of a "cure" for diabetes.

As everyone here who takes insulin will agree, diabetes cannot be "cured" by diet alone. And as everyone whose diabetes is currently controlled in part, or entirely, by diet and exercise will agree, just like "insulin is not a cure", "eating the right foods" is not a cure, either.

Merriam-Webster defines "cure (noun)" in our sense as the following:

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Yesterday, I responded to the question about "things you wish your doctors knew about diabetes and the daily task of living [with it] by mentioning that many healthcare providers' knowledge of diabetes is incomplete and/or out of date. Rather than be a part of the problem, I've proposed a first-draft solution — some things I would put into a Continuing Medical Education (CME) syllabus to fill in some of those gaps. I'm sure I'm missing rather a chunk of stuff, but then again, this is a first draft.

If I were to develop a syllabus to fill in the gaps in professional diabetes education, as I perceive they exist today, these are some of the things I would consider:

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On dLife's Facebook page, the following question is posed:

There is no doubt that doctors are key to success in maintaining your diabetes. However, not all doctors have diabetes. There are some things that even doctors do not know or understand about living with diabetes. What are some of the things you wish your doctors knew about diabetes and the daily task of living with the illness?

The responses range from issues of doctors not spending enough time with PWDs, giving incorrect information, doctors believing the information we gather about our diabetes is solely for their use (and not ours!), and having poor bedside (or examination room) manners.

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I got a bit of flak from a number of folk in the type 1 community for juxtaposing the You Can Do This project with the "you CAN eat this if you have diabetes" mentality of, well, many of the same folk. The issue is, the same folk who are, on the one hand, encouraging us to test and inject and correct are the folk who are talking about Food Police and Diabetes Police and how we, as people with diabetes, have to fight against those stereotypes by -- well, by eating all those things we should never touch with a ten-foot-pole.

This may work for people with type 1 diabetes, but it can be deadly for those of us with type 2.

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In response to Mike Durbin's Diabetes Blessings Week, I've put together some first "thanks" we might have given upon our diagnoses...

The DKA Survivor — Thank goodness I'm alive!

Symptomatic Solly — Thank goodness we know what it is!

The New Type 1 (adult) — Thank goodness there's insulin!

The New Type 2 — Thank goodness I don't need insulin!

Type 1 (at Thanksgiving dinner) — Thank goodness I have insulin, so I don't have to say "no" to anything!

 

Just a Touch of "The Sugar" — Thank goodness there's a pill for that!

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One of the earliest "grown-up" movies I remember seeing in the cinema was a comedy called Cold Turkey, starring Dick Van Dyke. The premise was that a small town would win what, for them, was an obscenely large amount of money if everybody in the entire town could stop smoking, "cold turkey" — that is, suddenly, as if the "off" button had been pressed and the power disconnected — for an entire month. The lengths the town fathers went to, to win, and the lengths the tobacco company went to, to ensure they didn't, made for laughter and hijinks that were accessible to even middle-school children.

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