Monday, March 26, 2012

Warning: Rant

At 6:30 pm, D and I sat down to watch the CBS Evening News as we most often do.  In the middle of the headlines/teasers for the night's stories was something close to the following:  surgery can cure diabetes.  D actually stood up and raised his hands in the "touchdown" formation.  Being Ms. Skeptic, I said, "Type 1 or Type 2?"  There may have been an expletive in there; I can't quite recall.

Needless to say, the segment was on gastric bypass/ gastric sleeve surgery intended for people with Type 2 diabetes, or PWD2.  As a mother of a six-year-old PWD1 and wife of a forty-year-old PWD1, I am up to here with the general conception that diabetes is ONE disease.

It is most assuredly not.

Type 2 diabetes can sometimes be prevented or even reversed.  Type 2 diabetics are typically overweight or even obese.  Type 2 diabetics are not typically insulin dependent.

Type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented.  Type 1 diabetics can be any size person.  Most that I know are in enviable shape.  Type 1 diabetics are insulin dependent.

Type 1 diabetics will DIE if they do not have their insulin.

Type 1 diabetes cannot be controlled by "diet and exercise."

Why does this piss me off so much?  Because when a reputable news source headlines their nightly news with a "surgical cure for diabetes," I want to see an artificial pancreas that works.  I want to see FDA approval of islet cell transplants.  I want to see my daughter's stem cells, which we pay to have stored each year, cure her.

I don't want to see her lose the feeling in her fingertips because she has tested her blood sugar for thirty years.  I don't want her to take one more effing shot.


So please, if I may be so bold, be precise with your words.  1 or 2.