Question from e-mail:

I am 37 years old and I have diabetes. I was diagnosed over four years ago and started on shots then. Shortly thereafter, I lost 60 pounds and didn’t take anything any more for diabetes for almost a year and a half. I started nursing school, got over halfway through and had to quit because the stress was keeping my blood sugar way up. My mom died last year at the same time I quit school and I almost died, I think because of the stress and depression. Since then, I have tried working three times. I can’t hold up any longer. I always feel nauseous and tired. I think I am beginning to get the first signs of neuropathy, and I weigh over 360 pounds now. I do not eat that much, but everything I do eat goes to my ribs, or somewhere close.

My blood sugar still stays over 300 mg/dl [16.7 mmol/L]. It has been so high that my meter wouldn’t say anything but HIGH. My blood sugar also bottoms out at random. I do not know what to do. I do not think my general practitioner or family nurse practitioner knows what to do either. They both have been very good to me. I just cannot go on living like this. I can’t pay my bills because I can’t work long enough to make any kind of money. I don’t know how to get on disability and really don’t want to because it is so restrictive. I want to be normal again. I want to see my daughter’s children and be able to play with them in the yard. I don’t want my legs to be amputated sometime later in life. I like my legs. They hurt all of the time, though. Please, please, please, help me. I am at my rope’s end as my mom used to say. I am becoming a desperate man. I didn’t know what else to do.