Playing diabetes roulette

Insulin pen

You tire easily, get warm to hot feelings not long after you eat, and knowing you have diabetes, you shrug and say, "It's just too hard.  Besides you only live once, and I'm not going to live my life having to watch everything I do like that.  I don't need to keep track either because I think I know when I'm getting a problem."

Lack of compliance for diabetics can be fatal or it can run its course until there are a set of health conditions that underline the seriousness of the disease.  Many people wait until that point to begin the regimen that might have made a difference earlier, but that "it's too hard" gets in the way.  It's a game of diabetic roulette, hoping your number ends up in a healthy territory, even when the disease itself is of the nature to require its victims to be forever vigilant.

It's easy not to be compliant.  After all, candy and sweet goodies are all around.  So the diabetic makes the promise that candy bar will be the last for the day or the week, when it may only be hours before more sugar is eaten in a cookie or ice cream or a sweet soda somewhere.

Compliant doesn't mean, however, simply not eating too much sugar.  It also means regularly checking the skin, eyes, and feet regularly.  It means testing blood sugar and making sure one's numbers for high blood pressure and cholesterol are also monitored.  That's because these conditions all accompany the potential for heart disease or stroke that is part of the package known as diabetes.

Playing diabetes roulette is a dangerous game, as the disease develops slowly and steadily in sometimes small and sometimes larger intervals before it devastates some area of the body.  By the time that happens, more medications and more conditions occur that require monitoring and medications.  Some of these medications and conditions overlap with others, making the disease even harder to treat.

While the diabetic complains about the problems of compliance, family members are often frustrated as they can see the possibilities of the illness becoming more and more grave, with the need for additional care that involves more than just the patient but others as well.  Eating that extra piece of pie may mean extra work for another person at some time, getting medications or performing other tasks that a diabetic may not be able to do because of the health consequences of the disease.

Whole families sometimes play the game together. After all, diabetes runs in families.  Father is in denial about his disease, so his sons believe they too can play the macho game of denial.  Or Mother can fuss over her female offspring yet not be careful about a diet that denies sweets, while a daughter sees the behavior and follows it, as opposed to maintaining a healthy lifestyle so the diabetes does not wreck havoc on the body, as it can do when there is a lack of compliance.

The game of diabetes roulette has no winners.  It only has people who end up more sick or even dead at an early age, from lack of following guidelines that can make a difference.  It's the game of life that deserves winning, after all; and what it takes is patience, perseverance and the knowledge that a game of chance that takes away most positive chances isn't a game that should be played at all.