This was an interesting story (and a long read). I’m guessing this is also a bit of a Rorschach test, where you see different takeaways, depending on how you feel about the state of healthcare/insurance and government safety nets in this country. On one hand, it’s kind of ridiculous (to me) that this man got to such a place of desperation before he was able to get help. On the other hand, the reality was that he likely did have options all along to help him get the healthcare he needed; it’s just that unless you somehow get entangled in the criminal justice/mental health system, you may not have access to the people who can help with that incredibly complicated and bureaucratic process. And clearly he made many choices, over a series of years, that led indirectly to his dire situation.
If anyone wants to discuss the politics of this, feel free to tread over to the Politics section where I have made a copy of this topic. If you want to discuss the non-political aspects of this post, have at it.
thanks @Chris. Yeah I debated putting it into Politics but it just didn’t quite fit there, and I figured that’s only one of the many aspects of the story that might be of interest to people.
No worries at all, I came to the same conclusion after reading the story, and felt that we could have two places to discuss it. Lately, I haven’t been as vigilant as I should about the political discussion, heck I even commented in one thread. So this is my attempt to keep this wonderful place as civil as possible. Hope it wasn’t too heavy handed in your opinion.
One of the things I found so interesting about this story is how intertwined his mental health was with his physical health when it came to T2. I mean, he seemed to go downhill quite fast in large part because of what was essentially a psychological problem – how he processed grief. And then it just created this snowball effect that quickly got too big for him to handle. It made me think about how we handle Samson’s diabetes too. I mean, we are very focused on getting those numbers in range of course. But so much of being able to properly manage your health is about being in the right frame of mind. And it’s easy to lose site of that larger goal when you’re just focused on making sure you do the next site change or making sure the next bolus is for the right amount, etc.
If left unchecked, or not treated sufficiently, mental acuity is impacted and vascular cognitive impairment can be the result. It makes sense to me that as your health drops, feeling no way out, that your disposition on life and your overall perspectives become more grim…the snowball continues escalating until you are on one leg, blind, robbing a bank because you just don’t care anymore.
but in this person’s case, it seems he developed T2 after a girlfriend passed away from DKA (she happened to be T1). He went into mourning where he completely withdrew from other people and was sort of just eating pizza and hotdogs all day long. So I don’t know if it’s that his mental clarity was taken from him by T2 per se. Although later on that could have affected things.
Yeah, I’m listening to the story now. Glad there’s a “let me read to you” option…because that’s far too long to read through in one or two sittings. lol
You forgot the popcorn, though. 
My question is…are they sure he had T2 and not T1? Twice he was checked and had significanly elevated BG’s…and they gave him “medicine” (I’m assuming some form of insulin??) when he cut his foot that he didn’t take because he “didn’t know what it was.”
Maybe he had T1 for a long time, just undiagnosed? Which led to the amputation, blindness, mental issues, etc.?
I mean, T2 can escalate very quickly; the fact that he developed foot disease and retinopathy after relatively little time with the diagnosis is actually more indicative of T2. We think of T2 as somehow “milder” than T1 because people with this disease can make their own insulin still. But in reality it has a more aggressive disease course than T1. So a person who develops T2 at 60 may live to 80 and you say “see? Not so bad, he still lived to old age.” But in reality that may mean the person had 10 or 15 years cut off from their life.
I think its possible he had symptoms and T2 long before foot infection, but not having routine physicals with dr. My dad never went in unless something was wrong or in pain.
@TiaG, you often say the most amazing things. That statement is so spot on. I haven’t read the article, but I agree with your idea about frame of mind.