The old fable of Androcles and the Lion -- or in some versions, the Mouse and the Lion -- highlights an unusual amity between two beings who are usually considered predator and prey. In the story, the lion has been crippled by a thorn stuck in his paw which he could not reach, see, or remove. The prey, whether mouse or man, sees the problem, overcomes his fear of the predator, and offers to remove the thorn. The wound heals, and the lion is ever thankful to his unlikely physician.

Last Sunday, my good friend (and fellow type 2) T. was back at our monthly STARFLEET chapter meetings, healed and rehabilitated after his most recent encounter with the Hydra that is complications of diabetes. This last encounter cost him a bit more than his pinky toe, putting him out of commission for the entire winter holiday season. After his previous encounter with the bone saw, he had determined to never let an injury or infection get so severe again. Of course this made me curious as to how something could become that severe, that quickly. As T. explained it, once an infection develops, it can become gangrenous in just a few days, and spread to the internal organs if the offending tissue is not removed immediately. Each time this happens to you, your risk of future occurrences is increased.

Bloody scary. And one of the reasons I've seen death from complications of diabetes as a matter of "piece by painful piece". Of course, a lot of it is one's outlook, and the more positive a spin one can put on one's life, the more positive the outcome. It's one of the reasons so many of us are living with diabetes, rather than suffering from diabetes. (For me this distinction is much more important than that of "(a) diabetic" versus "a PWD".) T. has a generally positive outlook on life, and he was fortunate in that his highly-skilled surgeon was able to minimize his losses.

In the middle of moving some stuff around the living room this afternoon, I was surprised to feel something sharp at the front of my heel. Usually something large enough to cause this sensation will dislodge within a few steps, or it is a nail clipping that is easily visible to the naked eye. (If it is smaller, it is usually a grain of glass that crushes to dust the second I take a tweezer to it.) Since the irritant seemed only to embed itself further with each step, I had to stop what I was doing and check out what the matter was. As near as I could tell, everything was clear -- shoe, sock, foot. When something like that happens, I find it's usually OK for me to shrug it off -- but I looked again, closer. Finally, I saw something considerably smaller than a speck of dust. We're talking sub-millimeter here, maybe as small as 1/10 of a millimeter -- at any rate, at the very edge of human visibility (at least, my visual ability to distinguish). I'm not sure a magnifying glass would have helped me, as the angle at which I had to turn my foot to inspect the sole caused the offending splinter (as it turned out to be) to only bury itself deeper into the ridges of my heelprint. After rather a bit of digging with a rather sharp tweezers, I pulled out what appeared to be a wood splinter, less than a millimeter on its longest dimension, and not having penetrated further than the outermost layers of epidermis.

I should mention I don't generally go ballistic over splinters: if I can't dig them out completely, I know my skin will eventually either push them out to the point where I can grab and remove them, or absorb them. Usually a day or two of discomfort, and then resolution. On the other hand, I've also (with some trepidation) sliced through the outer layers of skin to remove a huge splinter that had gotten wedged where it would have been more painful to try to pull it out the usual way. But here's the rub: with glasses, I have reasonably decent vision. My hands are relatively steady, my body is moderately flexible, and at this point, anything neuropathy-like is related more to being in cold environments than to diabetes. In other words, the deck is stacked somewhat in my favor. But what about those of you who cannot feel the splinter (or shard of glass), who cannot twist your foot up to inspect your sole, who cannot see to thread a sewing needle, or who cannot grip a pair of tweezers? Any of these limitations could keep us, like the lion, in constant pain and/or physical danger -- and instead of a slave or a mouse, our savior could be -- as they used to be called -- a sawbones.

It was for my friend T.