Here is another inspirational story from a cyber-friend who posted this on the ADA forum recently. I asked his permission to post it here because I believe our success stories help others, especially newly diagnosed people who fear an unknown future.
My Story: Lucky to Have Diabetes
Hi. I am George_M. What follows is my story, and why I feel so
lucky to have diabetes.
In August of last year, I was feeling like I had been
blessed with a wonderful life. After a disastrous first
marriage, I had found the woman of my dreams, and we had enjoyed 23
years of happiness together. My life had its full share of bumps in
the road, but those all seemed behind me now. After many years of
working 60+ hour weeks, my wife and I were both retired. We had the
time and sufficient retirement income to care for our needs and some
of our desires. We had a long period of caring for her mother, which
was very difficult and emotionally exhausting, but her mother had
passed away peacefully at age 95 a few months before. We were able to
indulge our joint passion for traveling to interesting places.
I get an annual physical exam. The last two had been OK, nothing
much to worry about. Triglycerides and cholesterol were somewhat
high, and my doctor advised me to cut fat out of my diet. And,
oh, one other little thing. My fasting blood glucose in 2010 was 99.
In 2011 it was 101. My doctor said that was getting somewhat
high. If it went up more she would diagnose prediabetes. She said I
should lose weight.
I was normal weight for my first 50 years, but weight had
definitely become a problem for me the last 20 years. I
gradually put on 140 pounds over 10 years. I lost that all
in one year on Weight Watchers, then gradually put it all back on
over the following 10 years. I was constantly very hungry, even an
hour or two after eating a very large meal. Now the doctor was
telling me to lose weight. Well, OK, I would try.
Then, about two months later, the most miraculous thing
happened! I started to lose weight, without any particular
effort! I lost about three pounds per month, for 10 months. This
is great, I thought, my doctor will be very pleased. I
figured my body must have changed as I got older and was naturally
shedding weight.
Then I went in for my annual checkup in August 2012. The doctor
listened to my heart and lungs, said how pleased she was about the
weight loss and sent me to the lab to have blood drawn. A couple of
days later, I got an email from the hospital that my lab test results
were available. I logged on. Most of the tests were about where they
had been the year before. But my fasting blood glucose was
235. The lab put a note in the report that they assumed the
test was not fasting. The problem was, I knew it was a fasting test.
What did this mean? I did some research on the internet and found
out that I had type 2 diabetes. How could this be?
There was no diabetes in prior generations of my family. My brother
has type 2 and is on insulin, but he had been exposed to Agent Orange
in Vietnam, and the government says that if someone who was exposed
to Agent Orange develops diabetes, the presumption is that it was
caused by the Agent Orange. I had not been exposed. How come I had
diabetes? And what happened to that prediabetes, where I
could know that this was serious and make some changes to keep it at
bay?
A couple of days later, I got a phone call from my doctor’s
secretary. She said my fasting blood glucose was high, that I should
avoid sweets and cut back on starches for the time being and come
back in two more weeks to repeat the tests. By this time, my head was
spinning. Did this mean I couldn’t travel anymore? Would I need
insulin right away? What about amputations? Blindness? Kidney
disease? Heart attacks and strokes? My brother has had two strokes
due to his diabetes and needs assisted living, and I have to handle
all his financial affairs because he is unable to. Would I end up
like that shortly? I felt like the bottom had just dropped
out of my life and I was falling.
Then I found the forum section of the American Diabetes
Association website. There were many people there who were
handling their diabetes successfully, and they were going on to live
pretty normal lives despite diabetes. Two of them, LizzyLou
and Alan_S, had taken the time to set up blogs where they have a huge
amount of information about diabetes and how to live with it. I spent
several days reading and digesting that information, and also reading
threads on different topics on the type 2 forum.
At my follow-up visit, the lab drew more blood. I had changed my
diet quite a bit, so my fasting blood glucose came back 156, but my
A1C was 10.1. This only told me what I already knew: I had diabetes.
My doctor referred me to a nurse practitioner and a
nutritionist. She also wanted to prescribe Metformin ER, 500 mg twice
a day. I thought I would be able to get my blood glucose down with
diet and exercise, so I resisted the Metformin. We compromised on one
500 mg pill per day.
The visit with the nurse practitioner went OK, although I had the
impression that I knew more about diabetes than she did. The
nutritionist advised a diet with 240 to 300 grams of carbohydrates
per day. I told her that I was already eating a diet with about 20
percent of those carbs, and I was doing quite well on it. She warned
how bad that diet would be for me, and I went on my way.
When I reduced the carbs in my diet, the huge raging hunger that I
had been experiencing for the last 20 years went away. I became
mildly hungry sometimes and moderately hungry for an hour or so
before meals. This made losing weight much easier. When I was
diagnosed, my doctor told me to lose 90 to 100 pounds (in addition to
the 30 pounds I had lost without trying before diagnosis). In
just over seven months, I have lost 75 more pounds. My
triglycerides and cholesterol have come down, despite doing the
opposite of what my doctor had told me to do to bring them
down—eating a higher-fat, lower-carb diet. I had been exercising
almost every day (mostly walking) for the past 10 years, so I just
became more consistent doing that. This is what works for me.
I wrote my relatives to tell them that I had diabetes and that
there was a strong genetic link. My only other sibling, my sister,
wrote back that she had prediabetes, that she was taking Metformin
and that her latest A1C had gone up to 6.5. All of us either had
diabetes or prediabetes.
I did want an endocrinologist who specialized in diabetes to treat
me. There were a few little things in my past that might have
been warning flags, had I only known. I didn’t like the
feeling that I should have known more and done things differently,
and I didn’t want to be having those same feelings in 10 years
about what I was doing today. I did some investigating, picked a
great endocrinologist and made the next available appointment for
about six months after diagnosis. When I answered her questions about
what I was doing, her eyebrows went up. “Where did you
learn all that?” she asked. I told her about the
Association’s website. She said “That’s amazing. Normally, I
have to tell my patients to do all these things you are already
doing. I have to argue with some of them. You are already doing those
things.”
I spent a month or so just reading on the Association’s website.
I felt it was time to try to repay the enormous debt that I
owe to the many people there who have helped and befriended me—by
trying to help others who are not as far along the path as I was.
I have been doing that for about six months now, mostly trying to
offer encouragement and telling others what has worked for me.
I am 69 years old, and many of my friends are about my same age.
We are all starting to develop medical issues. I have friends with
Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease, crippling arthritis,
multiple sclerosis and other serious conditions. I got a disease that
made it both necessary and much easier to lose weight, exercise and
lower my cholesterol, blood pressure and triglycerides. My
disease has not imposed any serious limitations on my life activities
yet, and I hope to have many more years before it does.
Unlike many other diseases, what I do can have a big impact on how my
diabetes goes, so I get to be largely in control.
And that is why I feel lucky to have diabetes.
Thanks George.
Cheers, Alan, T2, Australia.
Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter
Everything in Moderation - Except Laughter
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