Prayers, menu tips: Advice to a new diabetic from Sun-Times readers
Keep a water bottle by your bedside. Resize your wedding ring so it doesn't fall off. Take berberine, turmeric and cinnamon.
Readers flooded me with advice after my columns earlier this week about diabetes. Thank you everybody, both for the practical tips and the warm sentiments. I truly felt embraced.
Some shared huge amounts of information: web pages and podcasts, books and lists. They overflowed with culinary suggestions.
"Now I buy bread with 1-2 carbs (easily found at grocery stores) and eat french toast, grilled cheese etc." wrote Jane R. "Creamy salad dressings are better than 'healthy.' Peanut butter puffs cereal is better than organic 'health' cereals. Dark chocolate coated almonds are low carb and sweet. It's a whole new way of thinking but it works. Go check out the labels!"
Others were delightfully concise.
"Have to cut down on bread," was the entirety of Virginia M.'s email. (I decided to use just the last initial of readers' last names to spare them any online blowback).
Some were spiritual, offering prayers and good wishes. They shared stories of personal tragedy.
"Our 28-year-old daughter died from complications of diabetes," wrote Robert N. "Our daughter never wanted to accept. She was diagnosed at a very young age and it was an effort to keep her healthy. So many doctors, so many hospital visits. Wore all of us out … and finally her body just gave up."
Several wrote about their young children. Now when I begin wallowing in self-pity, I rebuke myself: "Show some spine; there are 4-year-olds coping with this."
The fight brings some families closer together. Mary Lou O. wrote that her 19-year-old granddaughter was diagnosed earlier this year and it has been a bonding experience for them:
"Our [physician] gave her an order to attend educational meetings with two very helpful diabetic RN/Dietitian/Nutritionist ladies. I attended those meetings with my granddaughter and we both learned a lot about necessary lifestyle food changes. "
She sent me the nutritionists' business cards — there's a lot of networking, trying to navigate the system.
A positive tone ran through my emails. Some were more enthusiastic, frankly, than I am quite ready to accept.
"Welcome to Club Diabetes!" wrote Royal B. Which made me shudder, a little, for its Tod Browning "One of us! One of us!" quality.
Email gets a bad name, but I found readers, perhaps because they take a moment to gather their thoughts, responded better than some of my actual friends in the real world.
"That's horrible," a colleague exclaimed when I gave him the news, really getting his back into that second word. He then proceeded to tell me about Ron Santo having his legs amputated — several people shared the experience of the heroic Cubs Hall of Famer, never pausing to consider whether it perhaps is not the story I want to hear right now. There was a bit of that.
"We had an orange cat who had diabetes," my sister mused. "We used to give her insulin shots too. Then it turned out not to be diabetes, but pancreatic cancer ..." Here she realized where she was going, and trailed off. But the point was made.
Three thoughts were key.
First, Dr. Anthony J. Pick, the Northwestern Medicine endocrinologist whom I wrote about Wednesday, dangled that most elusive prospect: hope. One that might not apply to the type of diabetes I have, whatever it turns out to be, but I'm clinging to it nevertheless.
"We now have data that if you're overweight, and lose in vicinity of 10, 12% body weight, within one to two years of a diabetes diagnosis, it's actually fully reversible," he said. "We used to teach it is progressive. I'm not sure how many people know you can prevent or reverse diabetes."
Even if I can't force the disease into remission, the changes I'm making to ward off its onslaught might still prove life-saving.
"When my father was roughly your age, he had a similar diagnosis and is now 93 and managing it very well with a device that's implanted and gives him constant blood sugar readings," wrote Eric Z. "A bit of wisdom you may find comforting is that it's said one secret to a long and healthy life is to develop a chronic condition and to manage it."
Finally, I really appreciated the reaction of my mother, 88.
"It's OK to have diabetes," she told me. "People have it."
Very true, Ma. I sure do. The question is, what am I going to do about it?