You Diabetics

Please don't smoke.

Just got done talking to the wife of a patient. They got married when she was 17. Her parents were both career Sacto PD. He was a hell raising street racer, and there some good spots back in the day. Her parents knew him professionally prior to young Patrick meeting his bride. When they met, è stato un colpo di fulmine, like when Michael sees Apollonia for the first time, only the bolt of lightning hit them both. I never saw the way they looked at each other change at all in 10 years. They way they looked at each other, if you saw your friend do it when you were in high school, you would tell him to cut it out and punch him in the arm. Being a mechanic and a hot rodder, naturally he smoked cigarettes. He quit a long time before I met him, but I tried to help him through the consequences, CABG, multiple angioplasties in his heart and legs, lower extremity bypass surgeries, amputations, in the end, he had one leg with a black half of a foot at the end, it was horrible the way that man suffered. Holding his bride's hand and talking to her about it was the worst thing I have ever had to do in my life. I would have rather jumped out the window than be there. We were on the 4th floor, but the wrong side of the building, not enough of drop for the fall to kill me. She will be coming in as a patient, that will be difficult. Man I gotta go walk the dogs.

Please, don't smoke.

__________________

I pray you will find the strength to use this experience for the benefit of your patients.  I lost a good friend to diabetes a few years back and I often think of him.  I don't believe he smoked, but he liked to eat and his weight was something he was advised to get under control early on in his treatment.  He never did make any real headway against it.

So many people expect doctors to heal them, but they fail to understand that they themselves are the most important individual in their pursuit of health.

Lost a former employer to diabetes a few years ago. As a 25 year diabetic it was a pretty real reminder that if I don't look after myself I could be dead before 60 as well. 
I cannot imagine the uncomfortable felling of having to have the discussion you just had. 

The good news is the tech to help manage diabetes is better than ever, the new sensors on the market rock, and having multiple insulin pumps to chose from on the market really helps. I only wish that the cost for these treatments ( and for insulin itself if you live in the USA) would be affordable for everyone. 

I have been told by people who know, cigarettes are harder to quit than heroin.  I did not believe it until I heard it from enough former junkies.

I could not understand how he had not died sooner, he was in the hospital about 3 weeks, looking like he was going to pass any moment for most of that time.  The hospital has not been allowing visitors since like March, so she had not seen him for 4 months.  She took Uber to the hospital Saturday morning, wheeled her chair up to the checkpoint where they take the staff's temp and ask them if they have had any symptoms prior to giving them whatever color sticker they have to put on the ID badge that day.  She was going in to see him or going to jail.  She went in and they spent his last day together, holding hands and talking to each other like love struck teenagers, and they were teenagers before unleaded gas was a thing.  Frankly, I was pretty surprised to see her.  There are these Lipton tea things that you get in a little plastic bottle, she likes the sugar free ones and I had one in the break room fridge that has been sitting there about a month, waiting for the next time I saw her, so I went and got it.  He was sort of out of it.  Normally, when nobody could get him to do something that needed done, she turns on the Mom Voice and he does it.  When I came in, he is trying to rub his eyes and not hearing either one of us telling him to stop.  I got right in front of him, so he could see me, he snaps out of it and says, "There's my buddy," smiles and relaxes.  I stayed as long as I could.  She eventually had to go home and rest, he passed soon after she left.

I was talking to my wife about it.  She is a nurse, spent plenty of years in the ICU, CCU and ER and has far more experience with this sort of thing than I hope to ever have.  Like I said, that guy was tough as nails to survive as long as he did.  My wife said he held on until he saw his wife again, then waited until she left, so she would not have to watch it happen.  She acted sort of surprised that this never occurred to me.  

Tell your family you love them every time you talk to them, just in case.

It would be simple to not give a E36 M3. But you care, and that's why it's hard. 

In reply to Toebra :

Thank You for caring about them and us. Diabetes played a big part in my wife's problems. She was born with a few heart and kidney problems and as a result spent most of her life diabetic with high blood pressure. Shortly after we married her doctor retired and her new doc was terrible. They put her on Metformin (sp) and she had a reaction to it causing her to have near constant leg pain and cause weight.  The doc refused to change her meds because that was a rare side effect, there was no way she had it. As a result she stopped taking all her meds, which she never told me. She lost weight, felt good, but wasn't doing well.  When she had her stroke her sugar was over 500 and blood pressure was through the roof. From the hospital we found some fantastic doctors who put her on a pump and did an incredible job of trying to right all that had gone wrong. They did the best they could to give us about 10 more years but there was no going back to normal and the damage eventually caught up with her. 
 

If anyone does have a health problem and doesn't think their doctor is taking it seriously or treating it as well as it should be don't be afraid to ask around.  Like any profession there are some really good ones and some pretty bad ones. 

Sometimes the most important thing is to feel like you're being listened to.

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

I wish I could thumbs up this post a dozen times. 
 

Duke said:

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

I wish I could thumbs up this post a dozen times. 
 

Thanks for the reminder: I usually forget that we can upvote the entire thread at the top.