DR. PONDER: Giving thanks for medical help for diabetes

Giving thanks means taking the time to stop asking for more and appreciate what you have. As we celebrate Thanksgiving across our great country, I think those of us with diabetes should also be thankful for the tools and knowledge we have to manage our disease. I wish everyone had access to the latest tools and training to take the best care of their diabetes, but I know that is not yet the case.

All of us yearn for a “cure” for our diabetes. It’s only natural. But let me make an argument that might give you a different view of what it really means “to cure” something and give you another reason to be thankful today. The modern word “cure” comes from the old Latin verb curare. Remember our ancestors didn’t have much understanding of how the body really worked, but often knew how to provide the care, concern and attention needed to allow the body to heal itself under a variety of situations.

And this is true intent of the word cure: to care, to be concerned and to attend to a problem. I often ask parents or patients if they don’t apply these behaviors into their diabetes management. Rarely do I hear a “no,” which brings me to my point: that the act of caring or attending to your diabetes is, in the strictest terms, also equivalent to curing the disease.

Nowhere in the original meaning of the verb “to cure,” was the translation “eradication of disease” intended. Of course, we have re-defined the word in modern times to mean just that.

This brings me to my second point. Whose diabetes type is going to get cured first? As any reader of this column knows, there are many different types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, MODY; and each has many different causes based on recent breakthroughs in immunology and genetics. It’s estimated that there are as many people with a highly genetic form of diabetes we call MODY, as there are people with type 1 diabetes (the type that I have). What we all have in common (regardless of diabetes type), is an inability to control our blood sugar levels without making some kind of effort and/or take medications.

Medical science is still not able to cure diabetes the way most people would like, but in truth, we’ve been doing it for years. If you want to define a cure as stopping all your type 1 diabetes medications, eating what you want and still having normal blood sugars, then get a pancreas transplant. Or lose lots of weight by strict changes in lifestyle or even by surgical weight loss therapy to reverse your type 2 diabetes. However, eating whatever you want afterwards might not be too smart after your reach your new healthier weight goal.

Most of us with diabetes have a mental checklist to measure any “cure” against. First, the results should be quick. That is certainly the case with most successful pancreas transplants. Second, we wish the cure won’t have serious side effects. A transplant is a very invasive and delicate operation, leaves big scars, and requires a lifetime of handfuls of medications to prevent rejection of the new organ. Third, wouldn’t it be great if the cure was cheap? Dream on. A transplant can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the daily anti-rejection medicines aren’t cheap either. Fourth, the cure should reverse my complications; put me back to normal. While there is some improvement, long term damage by diabetes to other body organs doesn’t always reverse itself. In other words, a person blinded by diabetes will not see again or certainly not grow a new lost limb. Those will take other types of cure that remain in the realm of science fiction right now.

I hope I’ve made my case — that we each cure our own diabetes one day at a time. And the “cure” we hope and pray might arrive someday in its own way asks us to cure ourselves until it does. We must use all our God-given abilities to care, be concerned and attend to the day to day choices we must make every day to not only stay alive, but stay healthy too. Some days we do better than others. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dr. Stephen Ponder has had type 1 diabetes since 1966. He has been a pediatric endocrinologist for 24 years. He is located at Lone Star Diabetes and Endocrinology. Email lonestarendocrine@gmail.com and phone 432-582-2414 or follow him at twitter.com/dr_steve_ponder.