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(INTRO MUSIC)
FEMALE: My father actually had Type II; he was diagnosed I think about fifty eight and
he actually died a few years ago from basically the effects of not caring for it. Eventually,
uhm, he had an episode where he passed out, hum, was lying on the floor of his house for
several days where no one knew, you know he lived alone and he was retired so, you
know, eventually sort of woke up and he was not thinking clearly; he was, got paranoid;
apparently he thought someone was trying to break into his house so he managed to crawl
over and call 911 and they found him. But it was that point at which my brother and
I realized that you know, this is not going well which is very sad because if I had known
then what I know now, I feel like there's a lot I could've done to help him control
it better.
[PAUSE...]
FEMALE: I have three children and in fact, the diabetes came after the third baby was
born so I was told I had gestational, which is a type of diabetes you get when you're
pregnant. I never expected in a million years to be diabetic after that 'cause it usually
goes away. The next thing you know, I started losing weight like crazy, all the classic
symptoms, you know, just this unquenchable thirst, I was very hungry; was eating a lot.
I'm still just losing weight, weight, to the point where I got skeletal. And that's when
my husband put on the alarm and said, "you need to go to the doctor." When I was lying
in a hospital bed, the thing that really frightened me was I got up to go to the restroom and
I looked in the mirror and my face was all puffy because they'd been pumping me full
of the depleted the liquids, you know, the fluids that had been depleted and that same
puffy face is what I saw in my father when he was lying in the hospital a few months
before he died so for me, that was the moment of revelation where I realized like, if I
don't get on this, I'm gonna end up like him, in, it was really frightening.
[PAUSE...]
FEMALE: My husband kind of suggested you should start a weblog about diabetes and I thought,
"well yeah, that could be interesting; I don't know if I would have enough material to write
about it or who would read it but, you know, lemme give it a try" and I had gone on the
web myself and looked for a resource and it was overwhelming. And I think I typed in
something like, "diabetes footcare," 'cause at that time I didn't understand why I needed
to know about feet if I had diabetes so lemme look that up and I got 1.3 million hits
so I started this thing, a weblog, uh, in 2005, about diabetes called diabetesminedotcom
and then of course, the book is out. This book, we think, is sort of the first hands
on, practical guide to managing your own health and achieving a long and healthy life with
diabetes. We knew that there was a gap, uh in the information that most patients have;
there's basically five very important factors. Uh, there are medical tests that everyone
should have, everyone with diabetes or pre-diabetes should have regularly and they need to, not
only have those tests, but understand what those numbers mean and we just felt that there
was not enough information given to patients uhm, about those these five critical tests
that also help them prioritize their own uh, health management. So, a lotta times people
with diabetes feel like overwhelmed because they think, "Oh my gosh I have to lose fifty
pounds" "I have" they have a vague sense of needing to live healthier but they really
don't know where to put their efforts; the idea is that people will get a lot more out
of their interaction with the doctors and the educators when they know why they're there
and they know where they stand with their own health.
(OUTRO MUSIC)