Diabetes Denial

I have students who take care of med/surg and tele patients. I have seen such a shocking trend in the last few years. In the past, it was only a few patients that had diabetes. Some insulin dependent, some non-insulin dependent.

In a nutshell for my non-medical readers, when you get diabetes as a child, you usually don't produce insulin and must test your blood sugar and give yourself the insulin as your pancreas doesn't produce any. Most non-insulin dependent diabetics got diabetes as overweight adults. In those people, their pancreas is trying to work, it just doesn't work efficiently.

My students have about 20 patients or more per week. For our large medical center, I would say that about 60 percent of the patients on our floors are diatetic. Most of them are adult on-set or non-insuling dependent. They are overweight and mostly non-complaint. Damage from diabetes comes from large fluctuations in the blood sugar. One day high, one day low. Tight control is the key. When patients are non-compliant and in denial about how tight this control should be - they ultimately require mutiple hospital admissions. After about 10 years, these patients develop cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, renal failure, required amputations, poor healing wounds, chronic infections. They are a mess.

This costs you, the insured paying for your insurance. . . . . literally BILLIONS!!!!!!! It is what causes your premiums to be outrageous. It is what keeps your cardiologists in their Mercedes. It is what overpulates kidney dialysis centers. The American Diabetes Assocation has screamed about this for years. The news media has storys about the percent of overweight Americans. Gross obesity is like a slow suicide. One way or another, it will catch up with you.

What is wrong with our society that we exercise less and just continue to eat more. Go into Walmart. . . .try to find small men sized clothes. There are three women's departments: young female teen, women's sizes, and jumbo. Where else can you find 4X clothes? We now have to have special blood pressure cuffs, big-boy beds, and erganomic devices to help lift and pull on these tubbos. Have you looked at children's playgrounds lately or been to a school? There are some fat kiddos running around.

I am one to talk. I have personally about 50 pounds to shed. But ya know what? I am movtivated darn it. I don't wanna be the next payment on my internal medicine doc's condo. It is time. Wake up America. . . .take a look at what we do and how we do it. Quit talking about getting healthy and just do it!!! Now THAT would be healthcare reform.