dear du members who are diabetic.

[Medical_Mom]

9. Let me tell you about my dad...

My dad swore he had “diabetic tendencies” for years and had a doctor that ignored the early signs of diabetes.

Years later, after not taking care of his sugars, he walked on hot (not cool) cool decking next to a pool in July in Phoenix. He had full thickness burns to both feel. What followed was years of wound care, removal of individual bones when osteomyelitis would set in, and always a sense of “what’s next?”

later, life included taking half a foot, and then his entire lower leg, and eventually his passing because he could not fight of the infections.

Diabetes is a nasty disease that affects every part of the body. In his case the lack of blood flow and poor sugar control led to poor healing, which is incredibly common. I was working as an EMT and later in PA school while watching all of this happen. I couldn’t do anything to stop it because it was too late by the time I knew anything about medicine. Sadly, we lost him at age 57 when I was 6 months pregnant with his only grandchild due to infection in his dialysis catheter.

I am pretty militant about diabetes with my patients due to this experience because it was avoidable. I’m sorry if this lands heavy. I’m always willing to talk to people about how to control it, keep sugars in check, etc.
Feel free to DM me if you’d like to chat