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So I met Carmelita in February of this year,
she came in for a routine physical exam.
She hadn't had any physical for a couple of years
and she didn't feel anything was wrong with her.
So she actually is a pediatrician and so I asked her
whether she has had any preventive screenings done
and she hasn't really taken care of herself very well
in the past few years.
So we talked about all the screenings and we did some
blood test and it turned out her sugar was really,
really high, and so that's how I started taking care of her
and her diabetes.
The first time I met her it was basically for a physical,
for an annual physical for my work and I didn't know anything.
I thought I was this perfect person because being a doctor,
I thought that I was doing everything right.
I was doing the right foods, I was doing my exercise.
Diabetes is not like an easy problem because it is actually
if you do not take care of yourself,
if you do not monitor your blood sugar and keep it
at the goals that Dr. Win had set for me then I would really
be in a bad shape because diabetes affects everything
from your head down to your toes.
So we actually spoke a bit on the phone and then she came
to see me in the clinic.
So we talked about all the pros and cons of medications,
what to expect in the future and I told her, you know,
let's start with diet and exercise,
maybe medication later on, and she was very motivated
and we frequently kept in touch and I checked her blood test
a few months later, and just with diet and exercise alone
she improved quite a lot.
She started out 130 pounds which would put her BMI into 23.9
which by American standard, it's a perfectly normal weight and so
after we talked about diet and lifestyle and her motivation to
lose weight she actually went down to 113.
And it doesn't matter whether you know what diabetes is.
It's like now I can help my patients better because this
diabetes is not something that I learned from medical school
or that I tell my patients or advise them about
what is diabetes, but now it has a personal value or
what it is because it's affecting me.
And so two things I actually learned from this wonderful
experience is number one, even though a person is
not overweight, that's for all the diabetes out there,
even though a person's not overweight,
once you lose weight, it really helps with the sugar.
And of course exercise really helps her improve
the sugar number as well.
And the second message is doctors are not immune
to diseases and if you don't check it, you would not know.
And it's very important to take some time,
just go for a checkup, do the recommended screening test.
I have to accept the fact that I'm a diabetic.
Knowing the problem, then you can actually find
a solution to it.