One of my “grammar school” teachers once told me not to use the word “ain’t.”
“Ain’t is a vulgar word,” she said.
Too bad she didn’t see me after a year at sea in the Navy. I think I used the “F-word” for every part of speech. I realized how bad it had progressed when I was talking a mile-a-minute to my mother and let a “F” slip before I knew what happened. I just kept talking, though with a red face, and my mother never said a word. She was probably used to this phenom since her husband, my Dad, had been a merchant seaman, and two of my older brothers also spent time on ships in the Navy.
But I’m not here to talk about cussing or even vulgar words, depending on how one looks at words. No, I am here to talk about diabetes, or what I refer to as the “Big D.”
It has been a couple of months since I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I guess I was pretty much in denial until the neurologist I have been seeing because of foot and back pain mentioned a couple of weeks ago that “Diabetes is a pretty nasty disease.”
On TV shows you see people, especially in years past, act as if they’ve been told they have the plague whenever they’re told they have diabetes. They act as if they’ve been given a death sentence. Well, maybe they have and maybe they haven’t. If you aren’t scared enough of diabetes, check this out from the “2007 National Diabetes Fact Sheet” from the Centers for Disease Control:
–Diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2006.
–The risk for stroke is 2 to 4 times higher among people with diabetes.
–Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults aged 20–74 years.
–Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, accounting for 44% of new cases in 2005.
–Almost 30% of people with diabetes aged 40 years or older have impaired sensation in the feet (i.e., at least one area that lacks feeling).
–More than 60% of nontraumatic lower-limb amputations occur in people with diabetes.
–Estimated diabetes cost in the U.S. (direct and indirect) in 2007: $174 billion
Are you scared yet? Well, those are kind of scary figures. I am one of those 30 percent of people with diabetes aged 40 and older who have impaired sensation in their feet. So, we tend to get freaked out about our feet and our eyes and our skin. If it’s not one thing it’s another.
Yes, if it isn’t one thing it’s another. If you have this disease, and it is a disease, you have to think that if it isn’t one thing it’s another to keep things in perspective. You do all you can do just to live and then you do a little more. Sometimes you slip. Sometimes you go on. You get hit by a truck. Sometimes you go on.
It is a nasty disease, Doctor. And I’m sure “ain’t” was a nasty word 40-some-odd years ago to my old-fashioned grammar school teacher. But the world is filled with some big nasties. And we just go on. We try to keep our feet clean. We try not get scratches and burns, like I have on my legs from stupid mishaps. We try to eat right. We poke ourselves to make our fingers bleed and check our sugar levels. We take our meds or our insulin. We exercise if we are able. We do all we are supposed to do. Sometimes we slip.
Then we go on about our business of living.