Diabetes Personal Stories

Jay Cutler talks frankly about his recent diagnosis of diabetes. This is his full news conference.

1 comment - 8 May 2008 -

I was diagnosed with type I insulin-dependent diabetes 54 years ago at the age of 22 months. A dear family friend suggested my parents take me to our family doctor and have me checked for diabetes after I showed some of the more common symptoms. I was unusually cranky and always hungry, but had a stomach that was hard to the touch as though food was not digesting properly. I was also always thirsty, drinking a lot and urinating frequently. Our doctor tested my blood sugar, and the result was high enough to indicate diabetes. He put me on 60 units of insulin per day and told my parents to take me to the hospital 30 miles from the little Western Kansas town where we lived to get a shot of insulin once a day.

3 comments - 8 May 2008 -

Carol Whitton of Coral Springs, Florida, discovered that her blood sugar often increased sharply after she drank a diet soda while dining in a restaurant. So she started to test her diet drinks for sugar, a practice she learned from watching the “Living With Diabetes” television program.

15 comments - 28 Apr 2008 -

Have you ever met anyone who thinks they get enough exercise? Everywhere you look there are books, web sites, exercise videos and articles telling people how to get started and how to stay motivated. Our family certainly avoided any kind of exercise plan. Although we played in the yard, took walks, rode our bikes, and played soccer, I never woke up thinking, "What can we do for exercise today?" Even though I knew we weren't active enough, I didn't want another thing to do.

0 comments - 28 Apr 2008 -

I was working at my computer when my 37-year-old daughter, Laura, walked into my home office and burst into body-wrenching sobs. She finally managed to blurt out that a doctor had just told her that my 7-year-old grandson had juvenile diabetes and needed to go straight to the hospital. I didn't want to add my own upset to the chaos of the day, so I went through the motions, calming Laura and being as helpful as I could. My husband Jack, a psychiatrist, canceled his patients and picked up Danny and his ten-year-old sister Jessica at school. The five of us met Laura's husband Brian at the hospital and spent two days learning as much as we could about Danny's diabetes.

3 comments - 21 Apr 2008 -

We’d like to invite diabetes professionals, persons with diabetes (and the people who love and help them) to contribute articles to Diabetes Health.

0 comments - 21 Apr 2008 -

Forty-six years of coping with IDDM hasn’t stopped me!  I’m a published, award-winning poet, an actress and, in my “retirement,” a vocalist.  All this from a girl from a far off place known as The Bronx – and a policeman’s daughter, no less!  

0 comments - 16 Apr 2008 -

Are you a scientific anomaly like me?  Have you or someone you know reversed the complications associated with diabetes? Did you suffer microvascular and macrovascular damage during the “growing pains” of coming to terms with having no choice but to live your life with diabetes? Then, did you turn around and find love and hope, which made you change your life? And after changing it, did you find after several years that you were healing the damage that you had incurred by your own misguided hand? 

55 comments - 10 Apr 2008 -

It’s late October, 2007, and Prof. Wendy Coleman has just learned about a competition called the Bayer Dream Fund. Coleman, a type 2 who was diagnosed in 2005, has been told that the fund grants a large cash award to the competition winner – money the winner can use to fund a personal project designed to spread the word about managing and living successfully with diabetes.

1 comment - 10 Apr 2008 -

I am a diabetic and was taking four insulin shots per day and still had problems with my sugar. I did two months of research on the Web because I had to find a way to get off the shots. I hate needles I was astonished at what I found on natural herbs!

26 comments - 19 Mar 2008 -