Category Archives: Diabetes

Diabetes, education, type 1 diabetes

Now Scotch and Honey I can understand…

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It’s October and for those of us with a family member dealing with Type 1 Diabetes that means….flu shots.  Hands up anyone who has heard one of the following:

1,  “I had a flu shot once…first thing I did when I got home was throw up and spent the next week in bed…never again.”

2. “I’ve never had a flu shot and never had the flu…lots of (insert favourite nostrum from ‘fresh orange juice’, ‘whole bulb of garlic smoothie’ to ‘wearing an old sock around the throat’ here) is all you need.

3. “It’s all a plot by the pharmaceutical companies”

4. “What, don’t you know it will give your kid autism?”  (this is frequently mentioned by people who wouldn’t recognize autism spectrum disorder if it stood in their living room juggling chainsaws….)

Of course this isn’t restricted to those of us who happen to be in the ‘chronic disease’ community.  We just deal with it on an annual basis. New mothers also go through the debate when their little bundles of love face that traumatic first round of immunizations.

When my oldest was a cuddly bundle of promise I dragged myself out to mother/babe groups in hopes of finding human companionship. I had coffee with one uber-mom who sized up my daughter and asked if she’d had her polio immunization. On hearing she was up to date on all her shots, I was directed to change her diaper on the bathroom floor instead of the change table. She might throw weakened polio viruses, you see.  That way she could keep the door closed and dettol the room before her little widgums could be accidentally exposed.

She was concerned vaccinating her boy could either kill him or cause him to be somehow less than perfect due to the big pharma conspiracy.  Matter of fact.

Oh. I see. Gee, look at the time–I have to get home before the line up at the laundry rocks down by the river gets too long….

Fast forward 12 years to when my daughters are in school and whooping cough has hospitalized one of their classmates and several others will be kept at home for  months. The school sent home a notice warning of the Pertussis outbreak in the school and to make sure immunizations and boosters are up to date.

Now I am older than dirt. I admit this. But I remember parents in those days were good little sheep who made sure we were all inoculated against anything for which there was a vaccine. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any Pertussis outbreak occurring the entire time I was in school. Or for many years afterwards.

I do recall reading about it in books or seeing it in movies about pioneer life.  A child coughing to the point of gagging, a sheen of fever; the doctor walking out of the room, dejected, closing the door behind him as we briefly glimpse a weeping woman throwing herself onto the bed clutching at her now silent child.

A bit much? Okay, the mortality rate for Pertussis isn’t as high as, say, being hit by a train but it is substantially higher by a factor of 1000 over the mortality rate of complications from the vaccine. Pertussis also leads to life long complications like asthma, COPD and the certain knowledge your parents are total dumb asses. Okay…that’s more like a complication of adolescence but it continues long into adulthood, providing you survive a childhood in their care.

Having a child with Type 1 diabetes cuts out all the well meaning arguments and any doubts you may harbour about the efficacy of this vaccine mumbo-jumbo. The fact of the matter is even a simple flu can wreak havoc on a person with a compromised immune system. The inability to keep food or fluids down isn’t merely inconvenient: it’s a medical emergency to the diabetic.

So, the bottom line here is that this year’s flu vaccine is available and your local health clinic will be announcing times when to get your flu shot.

As for an inoculation against ignorance…that one hasn’t been perfected yet. I recommend a short, sharp smack upside the head.

If you live in BC go here to find your local clinic and hours http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/flu/

Some other interesting links:

A great blog about infectious diseases and protecting your kids: http://blog.pkids.org/

(this entry about pertussis caught my attention)  http://blog.pkids.org/2010/07/

General information about anything medical but careful about looking at some of the pictures…http://www.medicinenet.com/flu_vaccination/article.htm

The Canadian Gov’t’s 2 cents worth http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/index-eng.php

And for the Americans: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

Diabetes, research

The lemmings were thrown but the buffalo were persuaded

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where all the problems began

There is currently a video circulating about those curly flourescent light bulbs, the energy efficient saviors of the planet. Well, apparently they give off electro-magnetic radiation. Yes, I’ll pause for the shock and horror to pass and the question, ‘what the heck is electro-magnetic radiation?’ to pop into the conversation. Well, I can’t explain it very well other than to plug in the definition from the Britanncia Concise Dictionary:

“Energy propagated through free space or through a material medium in the form of electromagnetic waves. Examples include radio waves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X rays, and gamma rays. Electromagnetic radiation exhibits wavelike properties such as reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference, but also exhibits particlelike properties in that its energy occurs in discrete packets, or quanta. Though all types of electromagnetic radiation travel at the same speed, they vary in frequency and wavelength, and interact with matter differently. A vacuum is the only perfectly transparent medium; all others absorb some frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.”

Breaking that down it means if it runs on electricity, it gives off electromagnetic radiation.

Remember the warnings about microwave ovens affecting pacemakers? Or last year’s menace of cell phones causing brain tumuors? In those cases as well as your mother saying you are sitting to close to the television, the culprit is electromagnetic radiation and what is now known as the EMF — add “Field” to EM and you’ve got a new stick to herd  a fearful public into that hell-bound basket.

watch your step

There may well be problems with the energy efficient light bulb but this sort of fear mongering is not the way to deal with it. Showing a meter leap from 61 to 815 tells me nothing unless I know what the meter actually  measures, what the units mean in terms of relative volume (1,000 milliliters vs 1,000 decaliters makes a big difference if it’s in your basement)  and what is the total amount I may safely be exposed to over a given period of time.

There is 1 baseline given:  the only device operating in the entire house is the fridge but what if the reporter gets a hankering for a little microwave popcorn? Or her producer calls on her cell phone. Turn on the radio, television and maybe play a round or two of Wii tennis. Now, what are the EMF readings, what device contributed to the biggest jump and how do those readings compare to what is given off by that coiled serpent humming under a lampshade?

The laptop I’m working on may well give off 3 times that amount of EMF…I’m not saying it does, I’m just saying it might.

So, what does this have to do with Diabetes? Well, there was a single researcher on this clip talking about a single study of one individual who had diabetes whose blood sugars were adversely affected by sitting in a room where a curly light bulb was turned on…Yeah. I’m not even going to start on this one because I should hope to hell you have enough sense to be asking the questions yourself before running around the room brandishing a pitchfork at every light bulb you can find.

When my daughter was diagnosed as having Type 1, we were subjected to a variety of well meant advice about vitamins that would reverse this disease. We were also asked what we had done to cause our daughter’s pancreas to crap out. And more than a few folk, not knowing the difference between Type 1, Type 2 and, well, a light bulb, suggested we’d given her too much candy…

So, when someone tries to tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing to make your family member better; has just read a book about a breakthrough YOUR DOCTOR DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW or knows a chiropractor who can stimulate your child’s pancreas through manipulation, take a deep breath and go for a walk in the fresh air. Just remember to wear sunglasses and a hat ’cause you don’t want to get skin damage from all that electromagnetic energy the sun gives off.

Diabetes, family, health, JDRF

It's Blue, it has horns, I'll take it.

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I have the grand title of  “Mentorship Chair” for our wee Vancouver Island chapter of JDRF. I wish it came with a big busby type hat a la “Loyal Order of the Water Buffaloes” because then I could at least look forward to doing the work.

It isn’t a steady sort of thing, you see. Some weeks go by and there are no referrals, other times there are 3 or 4 families in my in-box waiting to have a chance to chat with another family that’s been through it.   That really is all that “mentorship” means…one person who has spent the nights walking down the hall to check blood sugars talking to someone who is just starting out.

Those first few months dealing with a Type 1 diagnosis in the family are very isolating and this program is one that helps break through that barrier. Friends and family may love you and want to help and want to understand but there are times when that just isn’t enough. When a teacher thinks your little sugar plum would feel more comfortable going to the nurse’s room to have her mid-morning snack… or an in-law gives you the hairy eyeball for dishing out some jelly beans as a treat instead of an apple (even though you’ve counted them out so the carb value is exactly the same and it’s just after Halloween and the kid has been a real trooper). These are things we’ve all been through and it’s nice to hear it from someone else.

That, in  nutshell is what mentoring is all about. It’s a worthy activity. And I wish I had a fun hat to wear because it would help take my mind off the fact that I’m still dealing with Type 1 Diabetes. It may be for other people but it’s still the same illness and it takes me back, every time, to the early days for us.

For more information on the Mentorship program go to the JDRF website and if you’re on Vancouver Island, you’ll find me here...

World Diabetes Day blue circle around Banting House
Diabetes, family, JDRF

It's good to go for a walk around the mental blocks

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The experience of Type 1 Diabetes is collective and individual at the same time.  Everyone who has Type 1 will experience these events/symptoms/effects. Everyone who cares about (and provides care for) a person with Type 1  will also experience common events/symptoms and effects.  This is not news to anyone. It happens in just about every chronic illness and in the families who find this unwelcome guest in their homes. And hearts.

The annual fundraising “Walk to Cure Diabetes” …or as we must now call it, “The Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes” – welcome to the world of branding, it can be a building or an event but you too, with enough money, can own a temporary place in history – was in June and the amount of money raised has just been announced – Victoria $135,000; Nanaimo $35,ooo; North Island $35,000 for a Vancouver Island total of $205,000. That will buy a lot of rat chow.

The benefit of this event, however, goes so much further than the fund raising.  One of the biggest effects of a diagnosis of Type 1 on both the person diagnosed and their family, is the sense of being torn out of the world. This morning gives back a sense of community. Even if you don’t know anyone else at the event you see the other families and they still have dogs, other kids and the sun still shines on us all.

walking along Beaver Lake Beach

If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because I’ve written before in this blog about the walk, in 2008… I just wanted to bring it up again because I have been neglecting this blog so it seemed like a good place to start up again – on a positive note. Also it is something that is worth talking about again, even briefly, just to point out there are high points in life with Type 1.

Diabetes, education, family, JDRF, Juvenile Diabetes, research

Happy Birthday Dr. Banting

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It’s World Diabetes Day. Our local JDRF Chapter is lighting up the Johnston Street Bridge…but here, for those of you that are still in the dark, here’s the newsletter we sent out about the whole thing – I’m hoping I can upload it with links intact…

blue-hoop-day-november-141 Okay, not exactly what I wanted but click on it and there’s a link to the WDD website… I think it’s all pretty cool ….