‘It looked like corned beef’: life inside a Welsh amputation ward – as diabetes gets worse
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/07/it-looked-like-corned-beef-life-inside-a-welsh-amputation-ward-as-diabetes-gets-worse
Posted by Forward-Answer-4407
6 Comments
My dad developed type 2 due to poor lifestyle choices, but he managed to reign it in and lose weight in the process after overhauling his lifestyle. Unfortunately he did go back to his old ways, but type 2 can be put into remission with the right changes.
It’s not easy though and as someone who has been overweight for years and is now doing something to get it under control, I understand how people think it will just be okay, until it’s not.
Difficult to have much empathy. The majority of people that require amputations is mostly due to poor management and control.
Late diagnosis because not wanting to accept there is a problem, missing taking medication, not changing lifestyle, not attending regular foot screening, poor engagement with regular check ups be it 6 monthly or yearly and not acting early when you lose control.
There is only so much a doctor or nurse can do if you refuse to also help yourself then there is little that can be done.
The guy in the lead photo doesn’t look _that_ old or _that_ fat. It’s a shocking photo.
It’s horrible, crazy and unfortunately unsurprising that we’ve got this rapidly rising epidemic from an entirely self inflicted disease but no politician wants to touch it with a barge pole.
Little bit of a heads up about the link: the first couple of paragraphs are a little tiny bit graphic.
When I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in December 2021 I was placed in a diabetic ward for a week. I think all of the other patients in there had type 2, and two of them had amputations during my week-long stay. It was a terrifying dose of reality, but being thrown into the deep end like that really made me take the illness seriously.
I now follow a very low carbohydrate diet (typically less than 20g a day), which consists almost exclusively of meat, dairy and green vegetables. Although I (obviously) depend on exogenous insulin, my reduced carb intake makes the illness so much easier to manage – my blood sugars haven’t exceeded 7.6mmol/l since 16 February 2022. My most recent HbA1c was 25mmol/mol. I’ve seen type 2 diabetics follow the same diet to great effect. Not living in fear of developing diabetic complications takes a lot of the mental strain of living with the illness off your shoulders. It’s good to see that the NHS are now beginning to back low-carb programs for diabetics – if we (diabetics) all followed them, I’m sure the stress on the service would be greatly reduced.
My dad had his leg amputated earlier this year. It’s hard on them but also for us as the family. Life you know changes for everyone around you. House adaptations, taking them to appointments etc. it gets easier when they get a prosthetic but my dad is 70 so that’s another challenge for him learning to walk again. They operated twice, once below the knee and then above and in between a heart attack.
When I go around the supermarkets and see so much sugar packed food at low prices it’s no wonder why we have issues with diabetes. Also people get addicted to the dopamine hit from the pleasure of this sort of food. Alcohol is another issue. If they put a picture of the effects on our body like they do with cigarettes would people change their ways?