Diabetes Leads to Health Problems: Be Warned. The pictures are very Graphic of my Wound

 Off to the right of these words, you will see the result of a abscess the formed on my right foot and became infected.

Okay, actually, what you are seeing is the result of two surgeries and a wound vac.

My foot has healed to a degree now where I can walk, but the scare still remains. Twice I had to go to a doctor and have surgery on my foot because of my weak immune system and the disease that makes it so, Diabetes.

Diabetes is a chronic physical illness that describes a malfunction in the way the body's blood uses sugar. Genetically, I was predisposed to this disease.

There are many of you out thee, African Americans, Native Americans, Samoans--all Pacific Islanders, who are more predisposed than others to developing Type II Diabetes.

If you are not eating healthily and exercising regularly the likelihood of something like what you see to the right happening to you at a younger age is higher. This happened to me in my thirties.

If you are fat, not overweight, fat... you are at risk.

Look, a muscular person is overweight. You know you are not just overweight if your belly is hanging out and you have enough tire around your waist to supply the needs of a small city!

Eat right. Exercise. Don't go to the gym one time in the whole year and lie to yourself that because you keep a membership you are tying to stay fit. Actually go. Find something to do to get moving a few hours a day.

Your doctor will tell you to get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day.  Do more. The only reason they tell us to do that 30 minutes is because telling us to get out for a few hours will cause us to mentally freeze.

You know good and well that thirty minutes of activity a day will not cause you to be fit. What it will do is stop you from being a couch potato. Find a health level you want to maintain, and maintain it before it gets too late and you end up like I have with diabetic health complications.

Do not let genetics and an unhealthy life lead you down a medically frustrating road or even death.

It took months to get back to walking and is taking years to get to a physical condition to take care of myself.

It is not just the wounds that get you because they heal. It is the emotional losses that come into play when you cannot work in the way to which your are accustomed.

It comes into play when you loose the ability to run or jump because the feeling in your extremities has diminished. I know people have found ways to overcome limitations, but with diabetes one complication comes after another. They compound after so many years and even start to be the cause of new issues themselves!.

To my Black people, my Latino and Polynesian people and to my Native American people... We are all more prone to this disease of Diabetes. Be warned! Diabetes is just the BEGINNING of our woes if we don't catch it early and postpone it--even prevent it.

To my kids, eat right or you will end up like daddy.

Get to the Real Issue. Look Beyond Appearances.

I went to the Urgent care for help with a leg swollen three times its normal size. The urgent care doctor sent me straight to the emergency room, who sent me to admittance for my blood pressure. 

For three days my blood pressure was uncontrolled. I keep telling the nurses that the pain in my leg could be causing it. They ignored me because I was a diabetic.  They assumed that I was eating poorly.

The truth was I did not eat. The pain had caused me such grief that for two weeks I did not eat very much. Yeah, this was two weeks in the making before the last seven days of those two weeks became unbearable.

I prayed that I would not leave that hospital until they found out what was wrong with me and allowed myself to rest. Soon, my wife called the nurse to check out my foot and leg. The nurse was alarmed and called a wound doctor. He was alarmed and called three other specialist. Dr. Nwarfor saved my leg as he made a unilateral decision to operate against the other doctors advice because all the test returned inconclusive.

When he sliced into my flesh, he found what he suspected, dying flesh and dead flesh filled with fluid--necrosis. Pictures were taken and therapy began. I ended up in a nursing home because of the wound and intravenous antibiotics.

God answered my prayers to open the doctors' eyes to heal me. I am in recovery and the battle was not over. I still had a nodule on my lung to think about, but I can deal with one trial at a time.

At the same time, my spiritual wounds were nursed as the doctors worked to heal my body. God healed my heart and rewarded my faith by answering my petitions. No one listened to me when I cried because I have one of those faces that shows little discomfort at pain. If I show any discomfort, it is major pain indeed. It took an act of God to get attention to my needed area.

Just because someone does not look like they are in pain, does not mean it is true. Many of us are nursing hidden wounds of offense or heartache. All we need is for some person to listen to the whispering of heaven to know who to go and help nurse back to health. The grass may look green on the other side, but the roots may be weak.

The moral of this story is never dismiss a plea for help or judge a plea because it does not look like a desperate enough plea. Like me, someone's look of desperation may not be very evident at a glance.

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