My Tita Dada is the sweetest person in the world. She started living with us when I was in High School and since then have been a part of our family. She remained single. She loves the good life, eats everything she wants, and does what makes her happy. When she reached her fifties, she started getting cranky. She was always tired and she became very irritable. Even the littlest thing could set her off. Then we noticed she started limping, and can hardly walk at all as months passed. She was deathly afraid of the hospital so there was no chance of getting her checked up. Until one day, she fainted. We rushed her to the hospital. Emergency treatment was given to her, and one thing that got my attention was there was an order to inject her with insulin. Wait, what? Insulin? Isn’t that for someone with Diabetes?
Thankfully, a medical disaster was averted. Then in her private room, the Doctor talked to my mother and told her my Tita’s diagnosis.
He asked a lot of things, my mother answered that my Tita has been having symptoms for about 4 months. Symptoms of Diabetes. Finally, it got to the point where my Tita felt really bad and tired hence the faintness and the need to rush her to the hospital.
All sorts of physical exams were done. Blood pressure and weight, a test of her blood sugar. One of the alarming results is her A1c was 12%, which was way higher than normal. She’s been like that for so long and the Insulin just saved her life.
Her doctor told her to change her lifestyle. He said, “If you stay on this path, you’re going to do a lot of damage to yourself. You need to shape up and change your life.”
Since then, she has been on insulin. She asked to be reassigned in the province for her work. And now she said that her life is slow paced. Her words.
I still get this lingering fear of what if the insulin injection didn’t save my Tita’s life when the emergency happened. Although we don’t want it to happen, her fainting saved her and we wouldn’t know she’s been having diabetes for a long time now.
For now she is living well and with the help of insulin and proper care is managing her condition simply and conveniently. Insulin is such a big help. Now, her greatest companion is her insulin pen.
I’m still amazed with how my Tita’s life was saved with insulin during that emergency. Then I learned, during the term of caring for her in the first months of her recovery, how Insulin is one of the primary ways in managing diabetes.
It has been 100 years since Insulin was discovered and it has helped millions of people with Diabetes and I’m glad that it will continue to improve the lives of diabetes patients.
Lately, during the course of my Tita’s constant medical check ups, there have been talks of a
But we need to study more about these, as she is hell bent on managing her Diabetes to live as normal as possible.
About this insulinization.
Why do we push for timely insulinization and its importance?
It is said that initiating insulin early in the disease course has several advantages. Like what happened in her case. It saved her. But we found there are more to this than we thought.
We need to address what is called “gluco- toxicity” or the toxic effects and damage on various organs brought about by very high sugar levels in the blood which is very high in her case. Prolonged exposure to very high glucose levels could result in irreparable damage in the blood vessels, nerves, eyes, and heart. This could then lead to the known complications of diabetes, such as blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart attack, or stroke. She got a mild stroke by the way. That’s why she fainted. We also noticed her deteriorating eyesight. Imagine seeing her wearing eyeglasses when we know she’s already wearing contact lenses!
My Tita got lucky her Diabetes was treated early. Well not earlier, since her lifestyle was so bad, she got Diabetes. Her Doctor advised her to change her path so that this may also increase her chances of controlling her blood sugar in the long term, thereby avoiding the progression of diabetes and the permanent damage on the body’s organs, such as the heart, kidneys, and eyes.
She said that this is not the time to regret her lifestyle in the past. She insist that insulinization is not the end but rather a great hope that has been tried and tested for diabetes patients like her.
Now that she’s living in the province, away from temptation she said. I’m thankful that my mother and their other cousin are taking good care of her. When it comes to insulinization, more often than not, family members are the “frontliners” as they are the ones the patient is dependent on to keep their schedule and apply the insulin shot, especially for those who have severe cases of diabetes which luckily for my Tita she’s not. She is so thankful that she has them and sometimes me who gets to buy her meds supply as we all take the pledge to support her throughout this insulin therapy. Yes, we are determined that diabetes will not run her life.
For more information on second generation insulins, watch this video:
