Type 2 Diabetes
San Francisco Bay Area resident Patrick Totty writes about his experiences living with type 2 diabetes
See all posts »Goodbye, Farewell, Adieu
This is my last Healthline blog.
When I started blogging here in April, I had serious concerns about posting twice a week. There’s only so much you can say about type 2, I thought.
But several months and 60-odd blog entries later, it turns out that there is no end of things to say about diabetes. For one thing, because type 2 is very manageable, there’s a lot we can do to slow or even halt its progress.
That power reminds me of something I once ran across in my reading: In Modern German and Old English, the word gift means poison. But its meaning morphed over the centuries in English to come to indicate something welcome and good.
I’ve often thought of my diabetes as a combination of those two senses of gift—it is an unwelcome, life-disrupting thing that may one day be the end of me, yet in another way has had a profoundly good effect on me.
There are several things about type 2 diabetes I despise: The constant aching from inflammation; the ever encroaching neuropathy; the back-of-my-mind knowledge that my organs are all taking a hit; and a sometimes aching feeling of hunger even though I do not lack for enough food.
But, thanks to my “gift,” I have never been more aware of or dedicated to the need to live healthily. I exercise more, eat better (and less), and am more appreciative of the small goods each day can bring.
To all of you who have followed this blog, thank you for reading it and for considering the things I’ve had to say. I know that for each of us who is living with type 2, the experience is different.
So what I’ve offered here is just one of many points of view that we type 2s have about our disease. My hope is that it has helped you in some way, either in how you feel, what you think, or what you now know.
But whatever this blog’s effect has been, I wish all who have ever come across it well.
Adios.
Patrick Totty
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About the Author
Recent Blog Posts
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