HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Chaufan, C. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Chaufan, C. Social Bookmarking                What's this?

Sugar Blues: The Social (Silent) Side of Diabetes

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I met Norman soon after he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This formerly energetic and slender 50-year-old bachelor lived with his aged mother in the Santa Cruz Mountains and rarely visited doctors—only when he felt sick.

Because Norman was self-employed and his finances were modest, he had decided that his best bet was to forego health insurance and to pay for medical services only when he needed them. Yet when diabetes intruded on his life, the financial burden surpassed his worst expectations. Among other things, he discovered that buying health insurance would never again be an easy or inexpensive option.

Norman’s diabetes was discovered when ketoacidosis was diagnosed in the emergency room of the local hospital, where he had come because of sustained weight loss and an unquenchable thirst, but primarily because of a persistent cough that was seriously impairing his ability to work. The shock of diagnosis was followed by a week in the hospital, where his condition was stabilized and he was started on a split-mixed dose of NPH and lispro insulin (Humalog), fed a "diabetic diet," and provided with educational materials that were to be his main source of information about diabetes, at least for the first few months.

From these materials, Norman gleaned a clue as to why, while in the hospital, he often felt shaky and craved sugar. His insulin shots at times were not well matched to his meal schedule, probably, as Norman guessed, because of a shortage of hospital staff. Shortly before discharge, a sympathetic nurse encouraged Norman to do his own shots and finger-pricks for glucose monitoring. These competencies proved invaluable when, at discharge, he was instructed to check his blood glucose four times a day, write the results in a logbook, follow a split-mixed insulin regimen, and follow a printed . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Diabetes and Policy

Risk in Diabetes: An Alternative (Sociological) Analysis

The Sociological Imagination: A Path to Hope and Change

CiteULike    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?