Different perspective

In Finland they call it a handicap – diabetes. I recently joined the Find a Cure for Juvenile Diabetes on Facebook and found this encouraging text:

Every hour of every day, someone is diagnosed with juvenile (type 1) diabetes, the most severe form of a disease that annually accounts for almost $100 billion in health care costs in the U.S. alone. Usually striking before the age of 30, juvenile diabetes takes a harsh toll on people. Not only will they be insulin-dependent for life, but devastating life-limiting and life-shortening complications such as blindness, amputation, heart disease and stroke, and kidney failure are an ever-present threat. Insulin is not a cure for the disease—it is merely life support.

Juvenile diabetes is destructive both to children and to childhood. Controlling the disease requires 24/7/365 vigilance and imposes a grueling regimen. It includes eating a carefully calculated diet, checking blood glucose levels several times each day (by lancing a finger) and insulin injections — as many as six per day — or delivery of insulin through a pump just to stay alive. It means children and families living by the clock, day and night, for the rest of their lives—lives that turn out to average about 15 years less than normal.

Hmmm, so I guess this must be true, but I just don’t feel it myself. Grueling regiment, living by the clock, the horrors of having to inject insulin. The only reason I joined the group was because of my doctor’s appointment this Monday. Otherwise I would not have given it a thought. I don’t even consider myself as a diabetic. Someone would probably call that living in denial but really, if someone would ask who I am the words Christian, Finn-Swede and Scientist would be much higher on my list than Diabetic. I tend to forget my disease in all other cases than those involving food and sports. Of course I think of it all the time, but when I can control my values it’s not that big a deal.

But one thing that came up on the Facebook forum was true, and scary. Diabetes has become such a lucrative business that no-one wants to find a cure for it anymore – they are just looking for better ways of injecting the insulin or, of course, better insulin. And if you knew what I know about stem cell research you would not be hoping to get a new pancreas during your lifetime.

Well it just remains to see whether I’ll live 15 years less than I would have or if the way I’ve changed my life since I got diabetes – eating healthier and exercising more regularly – will give me those 15 years back…