Diabetes 

My plea :

Do not allow yourself to come under the spell of Diabetes whatever you do!

Type 1 diabetes may be beyond your control since it is an early age onslaught disease.

Type 2 diabetes is a somewhat controllable disease especially in its early stages. 

Diabetes (Type 2) is a begetting style disease which slowly gathers momentum as it subtly debilitates bodily functions often ending up in an earlier death. If death seems not to loom early, the debilitating daily bodily functions makes the afflicted wonder if a living death is any better than a dead death ? 

I can attest to the primary symptoms of diabetes :
(1) Increased thirst, 
(2) increased hunger, 
(3) increased frequency of urination.
These symptoms most often culminate in obesity that proves intractable. Overweight and diabetes go hand and hand in the struggle for graceful aging. They are mutually exclusive with that trip we call the good old life.

I've turned 79 this month having for over twenty-five years weathered all the complications with diabetes. I'm still plagued, but seem able to put up with all the damned discomforts that grind at my everyday life. I shoot myself with insulin every night, watch what I eat, take a regiment of pills daily, by God, I nearly stopped consuming alcohol, even without it, I stumble around using a walker. I hope my liver and kidneys are still viable. My eyes are suspect, teeth are horrible, and my feet and legs swell indiscriminately. I have no stability when I stand or walk since I've encountered Charcot Foot with corresponding nerve damage to my feet. 

My most pressing problem these days is the increasing severity of neuropathy in my hands, the hands that I use in one finger typing blogs on my iPad, the same hands typing this that you're reading. The loss of sensation in nerve endings has an ever far reaching debility in almost anything that I do, like picking up a glass, or a fork, or a spoon, anything.

My plea is that you don't get into a battle with Type 2 diabetes. Believe me, it will be a God Send for you, if you do all the things right that I did wrong. Read up on diabetes and follow the instructions. Never ever, even wish diabetes on your worst enemy. Good Luck !

Ronald C. Downie