A cure for diabetes is found!
Just imagine if there was a cure for diabetes tomorrow. Say if some mad scientist came up with a magic serum that restored one’s beta cells to full production and health within a day or two. (One imagines said scientist working from some sort of dark, gloomy castle, surrounded by angry storm clouds and frightened villagers, but I digress). That would be pretty cool, no?
I don’t think any of us would doubt that it would be rather nice; but wouldn’t it be rather odd too?
I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly programmed to do diabetes now. At about 7.30pm every evening a little mental alarm goes off in my head to bung in my lantus. Without relying on watches, clocks or alarms, I rarely miss lantus time by more than half an hour nowadays.
I also automatically guesstimate the carbohydrate content of everything on plate from about 50 yards. I can’t help it. I even do it with other people’s food – telling friends that they would need to put in about 9 units for what’s on their plate. Well, that’s what they would need to if, in fact, they were actually diabetic.
The list goes on, I find it bordering on impossible to leave the house without checking I’ve got my kit – finger pricker, insulin and a plentiful supply of fruit pastilles. If I go out without a man bag containing all said kit I feel positively naked.
So I wonder if our mad scientist friend did come up with a magic serum whether we diabetics would need to be gradually weaned off the diabetic way of life and back into normality. The shock of not having to do all these things might just be too great. Perhaps we would have to spend the first few months injecting saline instead of insulin – much in the way that ex-smokers can buy those stupid looking faux cigarettes, giving them the feeling of clutching something cigarette shaped.
Who knows? But if such a serum was invented I wouldn’t be too worried kicking the diabetes habit – I’d be busy fighting my way to the front of the line!
You could distract yourself with a HUGE ice-cream binge followed by a glass of lucozade, just because you can!
@hils – if I was cured I would never NEVER have lucozade ever again!
Actually I love Lucozade, that’s why I can’t keep any in for emergencies, I’d drink it all! Anyway, that’s beside the point; if they came up with a cure tomorrow all you T1s would need therapy, you’d all be suffering Post Traumatic Stress! Long periods of psychotherapy would be required before you could be released into ‘normal’ society again. This therapy would, of course, be run by the companies that provided all the diabetic products, and cost an arm and three legs… 😉
I would swap yesterday if their was a cure… Really would. Would put a few people out of work though 【ツ】
@tim Gonna need a shipment of fruit pastilles, can not purchase any for love or money here!! Grrrrr
@mikeinspain – really? Drop me an email with your address and I’ll send you a relief parcel!
Because you being such a self-centered sod, this β-cell-oriented cure would only be applicable to T1s? Then I hope @teloz‘s psychotherapists are capable of making my (and his) insulin receptors sensitive by means of cognitive therapy: by the time I hit 70 I might have T2 diabetes too… (like father and great aunt&uncle)
@ckoei – nah, the serum would work on Type 2, Type 1.5 and gestational diabetes too. This is a mad scientist of a high caliber, you know.
@Tim what is a type 1.5?
@mustard – it’s another name for LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_autoimmune_diabetes; it’s sort of like slow onset Type One which is often misdiagnosed as Type Two.
Ah, so “mad” as in dam clever…like a biochemically inclined Leonard of Quirm? Please replace “self-centered sod” with “phriendly philanthropist”.
I’m fairly certain Leonard of Quirm has already come up with a cure, if only we could decipher it. After all, there are no tales of wizards having to inject, and they certainly fit the overweight and exercise lacking stereotype…
Who the heck is this Leonard of Quirm you lot are banging on about?
Ah, so you’re a discworld naive @Tim?
Ahh, I never really got on with Terry Pratchett books (sorry). I once did the lighting for a theatrical production of Mort though. The lighting was rubbish and the play worse.
@tim: Don’t you dare put Mr. Pratchett’s Discwords in a bad light ;(
@annette: Coming to think of it, maybe the wizards use that same concoction they used to sober up Bilious (oh god of hangovers) by transferring his hangover to the god of wine, and their morning-afterness and hyperglycaemia are regularly displaced to tee-totallers and euglycaemics here in our dimension…know where to get some Wow Wow juice? It is high time our trials and tribulations are sent back home (Unseen University).
@ckoei – I agree, it’s an area of science without enough attention – the displacement of symptoms. Wow wow juice is unfortunately not stocked by my local supermarket though…
@Tim – I’ve never got on with Terry Pratchett either, despite being an avid Sci-Fi & Fantasy reader, I know you have to suspend disbelief, but I can’t suspend it far enough to accept talking animals. On the other hand, Polgara the Sorceress would sort it out in no time at all! 😀
Oook! Which is orang-utanian for: But we’re all talking 3rd chimpanzees, so you don’t believe a word we say? 😉 (And now you’ve affronted @neville too…)
@ckoei and @annette: Gaia preserve us! A coven of Discworld fanatics! We’re doomed! Doomed I tell you! 😉
@teloz: Discworldian charms should speak to any diabetic, seeing that carrying along diabetes crap is one of our biggest bugbears: I would happily go about without cure if I were the owner of a multipedal Luggage that trots along everywhere I go (and is capable of disposing of used bits & useless Drs. and Nursies as well)…
@Tim – Just as a matter of interest, what’s an ‘ex smoker’? 😀
Someone whose coffin has a chimney?
@teloz – its a volcano with a plug in the top of it, isn’t it?
@annette: An ex-smoker or a Discworld fanatic?
@ckoei – could be both…;-)
@ckoei – That’ll be me then… 😀
Ex-smoker – Someone with less staying power than yourself, @teloz?
The Americans have already found the cure: http://www.rawfor30days.com/index4.html
I love the small print on this one.
@alex – best disclaimer ever – essentially it says “only use this cure for diabetes if you don’t have diabetes” Marvellous!
I think we should all give it a go????? Thank god for the Americans!
I love the name of the chef: Rod Rotundi – meaning it’ll only work if you’re as fat as a stick…
Doctor “Fred”‘s appearance does not convince me of the health benefits of this diet!
It’s alright though – Woody Harrelson accredits it – major Hollywood has-been says it’s ok, so it must work!
He he! I love that Shoot Up has the most sarcastic readers on the web! 😀
But if you don’t fancy the sound of all those raw vegetables, how about ‘weaning yourself off insulin’ like Halle Berry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amEM-geXY7o
@clara – ha ha ha! Top stuff!
Using diet to cure Type One has been done before Dr Frederick Allen was the leading exponent of it before Banting came up with insulin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Madison_Allen. It worked well, with only one tiny side effect – his patients died. Ho hum.
@Annette – I have slightly less staying power than your average ice cube, so if an ex smoker has less staying power than me they’re only ex ‘cos they’ve pegged it! 😀
@Alex – “Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days” -That was most entertaining, I read all of three sentences before I clicked away from it! I then went back to look at the small print, but lost the will to live before I found it.
@Tim – I guess that as all Mr Madison’s patients died, that was a fairly significant side effect. Better still, as there’s no such thing as “social Medicine” in the US you had to pay for the treatment?
I think I would actually relish the lack of doing anything if I was cured – like when I take a holiday and can turn all my alarms off!
I hope my mum never see’s the Halle Berry thing, or she’ll be on my back about it 🙁 Stupid hippy…