Fish out of Water

For my fish out of water experience, I attended a class at my work for people who are diabetic. The class was to give information on diabetes and also gave a demonstration on how to test your blood sugar and when a person needed to inject insulin into their body.

For me, this experience was pretty uncomfortable. I was the youngest person there by probably 30 years and the majority of diabetic patients in the room were overweight or morbidly obese. It was difficult for someone like me, who is not overweight and doesn’t have any illnesses, to be sitting in a room full of people who were trying to manage their glucose levels to survive.

Throughout the class session, the lecturers spoke about what causes diabetes, what medicine people take to regulate their glucose levels, how insulin can save a person and ways to stay healthy as a diabetic.

They first covered the main causes for and symptoms of diabetes, saying that when a diabetic person eats food, the body breaks down all of the sugars and starches into glucose that fuels the body. Insulin takes the sugar from the blood stream into the cells, however, type 2 diabetics do not produce enough insulin, or the insulin is ignored by the body and glucose builds up in the blood rather than going into the cells, then it leads to complications in the body.

People who are diabetic often are put on medication to help regulate their glucose levels. With the proper medication, meal planning and weight loss, diabetics can manage sugar levels. Depending on the particular symptoms a person has, a person might take oral pills or inject insulin. Multiple types of pills can be taken together or by themselves to help maintain levels, same goes for the insulin. In many cases, diabetic patients will take both pill and insulin as the best way to maintain glucose levels.

For a way to stay healthy, diabetics are encouraged to exercise often and eat healthy meals. One of the things I noticed was that many of the diabetic people in the meeting were severely overweight and learned that being overweight helps contribute to becoming a diabetic. There are many people who are diabetic because of their genes and it is hereditary, but that’s not always the case. A good diet and exercising daily can be a good way to prevent a person from getting diabetes.

It was hard for me to connect with the patients I was sitting in a room with, mainly because I am not diabetic nor am I overweight and at risk for diabetes. I’ve always been an active person and eat a fairly balanced diet so it’s hard for me to relate when all a person does is eat bad and never exercise. I feel bad for them, because once a patient has diabetes, they spend the remainder of their life trying to regulate it, which has to be hard, physically and emotionally. Mostly, going to the class only encouraged me to keep up a healthy diet and remember to exercise on a regular basis so that I am never to the point where I am at risk for diabetes.