I am really upset … 3 Poor self care and diabetes complications

Those of you following this blog will know the story about my friend T who works for a friend/client of mine. At Christmas time he scraped his foot while swimming and by March his foot had been amputated.  He is still getting around on crutches while he awaits a prosthetic foot.

I was upset once again yesterday when I was told that T was admitted to hospital last Thursday with deep vein thrombosis in the remaining ‘good’ leg. He remains hospitalised at this time and I will contact his son later this morning to get the latest update. The grave danger and possible consequences in this situation do not have to be spelled out.

What really, really gets to me is that this whole unfolding crisis could quite probably have been avoided completely. It need never have happened.

T really needs to supplement his pension income, his employer wants to accommodate this but also has to deal with T’s lengthy  absences from work. It has placed my client in a  difficult situation which will have to resolved one way or another.

When we blithely ignore the warning signs that our lifestyle is causing our bodies to deteriorate, we are literally toying with our  lives. There are thousands of medical conditions that can befall us over which we have no control whatsoever. Surely it makes sense to take charge of what we can control and influence? But we just don’t do it.

I am relentlessly driven by a number of things to continue on my odyssey back to optimal (optimum?!) wellness. I cannot just let it go. I cannot just let things slide – much as I am so often tempted to do. I deviate from the path – badly sometimes – and yet I cannot throw in the towel.

• I value my financial independence and the lifestyle that this affords me.
• I dread the day my children have to step up to the plate and provide for me financially.
• I fear being dependant on others to care for me physically. I cared for my dying mom-in-law for over a year before she died and it was a harrowing experience for both of us. Well do I remember the two of us crying bitterly in each other’s arms as I changed her filthy disposable nappy yet again. The anguish she suffered from the pain and loss of dignity is something that still lives with me  26 years later.
• I am angry at myself for the stupidity I exhibited over many years in not looking after my health and lifestyle.  I still exhibit this same stupidity ; work and stressful deadlines still predominate in my life.

One small consolation is that sanity has now prevailed long enough for me to appoint a temporary office assistant. After only 3 mornings with us, the ‘advent of Nicky’ is changing my office landscape and I will talk more about this in a later post.

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So, how did it go?

As we reluctantly ease back into work mode after a lazy Easter weekend, W & I are pleased to note that we both lost a little weight over the weekend. We did indulge in a few, small easter eggs and sundry other foods such as a lovely bacon/egg breakfast and a couple of takeaways and visits to food outlets in CW (Canal Walk Shopping Centre, Century City)

We realise that it’s not about ‘dieting’. It’s about consciously making choices (indulging our love of chocolate which we seldom do) and then simply re-focussing on what we know is the right eating regime for us.

In past years, I – for one – would have polished off lots  of marshmallow eggs and any/all hollow eggs that came my way! The huge Easter egg market set up in CW was a sight to behold and I did buy a box of Lindor 60% balls. I dished them out very quickly! I could have polished off the lot by myself without much trouble but in truth I had no real desire to do that.

My glucose levels did not go haywire and we will soon see if there were any real spikes this week. I was due to go for my bi-annual fasting HbA1c test this morning but am fighting a cold that I picked up yesterday. Got up at 2am and swallowed a mega dose of Vit C so have had to postpone the test until tomorrow morning.

I will also make sure we both have our bottles of ice water on our desks – something that we tend to forget. So vitally important!

I have not posted about what I drink – I will try to do that this evening. At boarding school in the village made world famous by Alan Paton, Ixopo, a huge treat was to be ‘let out of’ hostel on a Saturday morning. We girls would all troop down to the village and settle in the ‘tea room’ and check out the boys while consuming large helpings of slap chips, hamburgers and Coca Cola!

Old habits die hard and if I was unwise I would still happily consume greasy burgers, fries and coke all these years later. Such is the influence of childhood habits!

Would love to hear how your Easter weekend went?

Chicks rule!!!

Right! Now I’m really getting somewhere!

Broken a plateau which really frustrated me for the much of February and this month to date.
Hovering between 21 and 22kg loss was not a joke and unfortunately my life is so crazy at this time that I had not posted here about it.

Stand by…….. drumroll…… 23.1kg down this morning!!! Whew what a great feeling – I’m on the downward path again. Decisively so.

Let me encourage you not to give up if you also experience no or minimal losses over an extended period – a few weeks in my case. Our bodies are not engines that we fuel and can then expect to perform to specification. Each and every one of us is very, very different and as we pay more attention to our health and bodies, we get to know what works and what does not.

I can honestly state that I did not panic and I did not think even for one split second about throwing in the towel. That option did not cross my mind.

So, what lead to the breakthrough? Two things only – portion control and eating right. In my case, as you know, ‘ eating right’ is a combination of my W-L plan, my plan devised by a dietician well versed in low GI/GL principles, ongoing discussions and shared info with my doctor Anna Hall and last but honestly not least my own research into the kind of nutrition best suited to slay the Metabolic Syndrome dragons.

Very bad grammar in the above paragraph but I am posting this nonetheless!! Or should I say I am nonetheless posting this? Eileen – get back to the subject at hand – you are fiddling again!

Please comment on this post or write to me personally if you are having similiar problems. A problem shared is a problem halved – most of the time anyway.

Chicks rule??
A real biggie is that I now weigh less than my husband – quite something that – as he is also now on his own journey which is a new development which I have yet to write about. That was another huge breakthrough in our little family.

Have a great day and a safe weekend.

Have you got ‘a bit of’…? Yeah, so have I …

You know the drill. You see someone you have not seen for some time and one of the first questions they ask is always “And so how have you been since we saw you last?” or “How’s life treating you?”

How often we South Africans would answer something along the lines of –
“No,man, I’m fine thanks. My quack says I’ve got a bit of cholesterol – (here substitute with blood pressure or weight or sugar or bad indigestion or any other lifestyle related condition you have) – but, hey, I’m lekker. And you?”

I am here today to tell you that there is no such thing as ‘a bit of’. The ‘bit of’ that you have has already started on its destructive trail in your body. There will probably be no other indications (yet) of this destruction other than the ‘bit of’ that has manifested itself as glibly stated above.

The more astute of you will realise that writing on this forum is a huge motivation for me personally to stay the course and I truly hope that my scribblings do the same for you.

I should already be at my day job next door, so I will leave you to ponder your own ‘bits of’ and I will try to clock in again later today!

I am really upset … 2

I have survived 2 weeks of hell over the dreaded Year End as well as the Year End PAYE/UIF recons and submissions to SARS by yesterday. The caps for Year End are deliberate – Year End looms large in my line of work! I feel like I have been mangled in a mixer!

Anyway enough on that, all now sorted and we’re back on track.

My friend T is out of hospital, scooting around in a wheelchair a day after discharge and walking with crutches while his wife hovers anxiously behind him with the wheelchair at the ready.
He stops every few meters and sits in the wheelchair to catch his breath; then he’s back up again and walking some more …

Bear in mind this is a diabetic of 72 who almost definitely did not take proper care of himself. He is very much a ‘no nonsense’ ‘no hocus pocus’ type!

He’s also already back at work in his wheelchair for an hour or so per day; much to my utter relief. He is admin assistant to the owner of one of the most popular butcheries in KZN! He is my ‘man on the ground’ who simplifies my life greatly.

I just trust that he will not overdue things but it is a fact that his ‘can do’ attitude is pulling him through this traumatic episode. I expect to see him striding around on a prosthetic foot in about three months time.

Hats off to you Tony!

I am really upset…..

Today I learned that a friend and business colleague of mine has had his right foot amputated this last week. No prizes for guessing that he is a diabetic.

T scraped his foot in the swimming pool of the retirement village where he resides at Christmas time. Little did he know that less than 2 months later he would have first his toes,then his foot, then a few more cms of his leg amputated. The scrape on his foot did not heal, gangrene was a problem, his medical advisors tried all they could to save the foot without success.

An angiogram further revealed little circulation in the right leg below the knee and two weeks of sustained exercise under supervision did not help. We are told that a stent has been inserted to improve circulation to the stump; apparently successfully. A prosthesis (sp?) will be made and he should recover in due course.

The whole distressing matter has, once again, brought home to me that diabetes is a deadly disease and those who tend to take it lightly are literally playing with their lives. There is no such thing as mild diabetes.
You either have it or you don’t. It is not ‘ better’ to have type 2 rather than type 1. I could go on about this for pages but I think I have made my point.

May I strongly recommend having your glucose levels checked immediately if you have never done so.
May I strongly recommend that if you are already pre-diabetic that you take the matter VERY seriously.
May I strongly recommend that you implement lifestyle and dietary changes as a matter of urgency.