Living with Diabetes

I try to keep away from politics but all the talk about ADA made me realize that sometimes you have to get involved to make things better. It is OK to once in a while expect others, like the ADA, to solve some problems for you, but eventually you have to get involved too. So I took a deeper look at this new US Senate bill - The Diabetes Screening and Medicaid Savings Act (S. 755) . What is this bill? It has two parts - 1) Make testing for diabetes part of Medicaid. I agree on this one. Testing and diagnosing early are great savers for Type2 diabetics for sure. 2) Comprehensive benefits for individuals with Diabetes. Now this part is a little tricky. I like what it says in principle. We should give better and free benefits for diabetics that are struggling especially ones who do not have coverage and cannot afford it. But too many open questions left like who is going to pay for all this? The cost of managing diabetes keeps going up each year. Possible additions to the Bill 1) Provide ...

Got some interesting comments on my last post about the ADA - Living with Diabetes: What I think about the ADA I got some insights into myself based on the comments. I do not feel like the ADA is doing much for folks like me who want to manage their type2 diabetes without drugs. But since I was not happy with it, I assumed that other, like folks with Type1 are the ones that are satisfied and have their needs met. The comments go to show that that is not true. Just because I was not satisfied does not mean that someone else is either. Lesson learned, stick to what you feel. Do not prejudge what others think. When in doubt, ask. So now with the ADA, looks like it is leaving lots of people unstaisfied. Nto sure what can be done. Maybe the organization can split inot smaller groups. Having focusssed groups for each style of disease and its management might be a way to provide better support. Not sure if the ADA has the reqources or the manpower for something like this, but it might be wort...

ADA stands for the American Diabetes Association. The ADA is the organization behind www.diabetes.org . I see the ADA as a big behemoth organization. It is big, huge and does some good work. Active in the org are doctors on the board who deal with diabetic patients day in and day out. The organization wields a lot of power and does great work for advocacy and influencing the American political system. I respect them for the kinds of litigation they have taken on. It is good to know that there is one place where you can go with issues about your disease if you need to. They also do an OK job of educating folks about the disease. What I do not like about the organization is the fact that their philosophy about carbs etc does not jive with my living. I find the ADA a lot more biased towards handling Type1 diabetes. For Type2 the message seems to be that you have to go on medication and progressively move towards an insulin regimen. I disagree with that attitude and feel that it is possibl...

I am shocked with what is going on. I imagine college as a fun and free place. The fact that someone can come in with weapons, block the doors and start shooting randomly is insane. But then I guess that is what people around the workd are thinking the killer was, insane. Back in India while I was in college, every year I would hear atleast two cases of students losing it, nervous breakdowns aka NBD. Most of the time it was related to stress from the pressure of studying. Not once did I hear any one of them deciding to hurt others and go down in a blaze of fire. But I suspect that soon this sort of thing is going to start showing up everywhere in the world. One of the problems of being connected all over is the fact that copy cats can spring up anywhere. I pray for the well being of the families of those who lost people. I cannot even begin to imagine the sorrow. I pray for the family of the killer as they will bear the burden of his actions for the rest of their lives.

Last week I went on a customer visit. Made an intersting observation while I was on this trip. The csutomer site only had free coffee for its employees. Where I work, I get lots of free drinks, all kinds of sodas, juices, bottled water and great Starbucks coffee. I noticed that I actually drank lesser saoda while I was on the customer site. There was soda available through the vending machines, but that was not as easy as opening up a door and taking your pick. I realized how many soadas I do end up drinking. They are all diets, but the number is quite high. Weird, but I felt that there is a disadvatage of having all this free stuff be available. On the flip side, since it was not easy to grab a bottle of water and drink it, my water consumption went really down. Not good as I started feeling more tired by the evening. I am still not sure if having th free stuff is good or bad, but will watch my consumption of the diet sodas going forward.