Diabetes_Essay

Have you ever known anyone with diabetes' It is a very dangerous and life threatening disease. My baby cousin is now 16, but was diagnosed at age 3 with juvenile diabetes. To see her have to get her finger pricked daily was heart breaking to imagine that someone so innocent could have just gotten this disease. Diabetes is a disease when your body doesn’t produce enough insulin or can’t use the insulin produced efficiently. Insulin is a hormone which is a key factor in helping the body use the digested food for growth and energy. There are 2 types of diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2. If a person is diagnosed with Type 1 juvenile diabetes it is usually in their teenage years. For a teenager that is very hard to handle. For teenagers your eating habits present a serious problem. It is important to keep to a regular schedule because your blood sugar level, which is also called glucose, could drop. While at school one might be embarrassed to have to take an insulin shot, but it has to be done. Ryan Dinkgrave, a 16 year old high school student states that a person with diabetes needs to “Control the diabetes, don’t let it control you.” Type 2 diabetes is generally diagnosed when a person is overweight, is over 30, and doesn’t exercise. It also can run in the family genes, but the same conditions apply to both. Sometimes diabetes is very hard to diagnose. For example, I read an article about a lady whose son was 11 months old and what they thought was the flu turned out to be Type 1 diabetes. The doctors at first thought it was asthma, but when the asthma medicine wasn’t working they eventually found out. The child almost died waiting on the diagnosis, which can be very scary for parents. One of the first signs of Type 1 diabetes is flu like illness. It gradually turns into diabetes over the next few weeks. Typical signs are increased thirst and frequent urination. At this stage your body is pulling excess sugar from your body tissue which makes you thirsty. All the fluid you drink makes your drink more and urinate more which then makes your sugar leave in your urine. Another symptom is extreme hunger. A person may be eating, eating, eating, but the food isn’t producing enough energy for that person. They are just eating to fill the hunger spot in their stomach. Without insulin the glucose produced from carbohydrates never reaches your body’s energy-starved tissues. Another very scary symptom is blurred or lost vision. The reason for this is the high level of glucose is pulling fluid from the lenses of your eyes. This affects your vision. A patient should always go get an eye exam yearly. As well as yearly physicals, see your dentist regularly and have needed vaccinations. If you are living with diabetes or know someone who has it please look out for them and help them out as much as possible. It doesn’t have to be a hard life to live; you just have to know what you can and cannot eat. Be strong within yourself and don’t let it control you. My cousin is currently in an in-patient hospital because she didn’t think that taking her blood reading was that important. Her mom would sneak in while she was sleeping to make sure her levels were okay. For a parent it has to be tough. I give her a lot of credit for trying to keep her daughter healthy. Once they hit the age of independence it is up to her to realize that she could die or go into a coma if she doesn’t watch her diabetes.