Hey there,
I am Senthil Nathan from Karaikkudi, a small town in southern India that is known for its Chettinad cuisine and grand 19th century houses built with extensive usage of carved Burmese teak. This blog is not about me per se. This blog will be in equal parts about my struggles with and grumbles about diabetes and also the learning moments in living with diabetes and happy times despite living with diabetes. Over the past few years, I have been active in social media and have learnt a lot. Until now I have only been a consumer of information in social media. Henceforth I am going to try to be a contributor of information. As this is an introductory post, this will have more of “me”. I will try to keep it generic in the ensuing posts.
I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was twenty-three years old. At that time I was working in my first job and staying alone out of home. I went on a weekend trip with my colleagues to a beach about two hours by road from the city where we lived and worked. It was a young crowd, including women, all in their twenties. About an hour after we started, I asked the driver to stop the bus for a restroom break. No one else wanted a restroom break after just an hour of travel. I had the embarrassingly tough job of persuading people that it was really urgent and that they have to stop the bus for a break. It is an occasion that I will not forget. I probably would not have felt bad if I had done something like that as a ten-year-old kid or as a slightly more mature young man of thirty. But at that age, it was different and it was mortifying. After the brief stop, we reached the beach without any further incidents. The guy who organized trip announced that we should buy water for ourselves. At the end of four hours at the beach, I realized that I had bought and drunk eight one liter bottles of water.
Looking back now, I can say that I had been ignoring some symptoms for at least a couple of months before the trip. Though I was aware that excessive thirst and excessive urination were symptoms of diabetes, it never struck me before that to check. I went to meet a doctor on the Monday after the weekend. She confidently said, “You will surely not get diabetes at this age.” I insisted on a blood test and in the next half an hour, it was confirmed. I had diabetes. I was initially diagnosed as Type-II Diabetes and then(about 3-4 years later) as LADA. I will write more about LADA in future posts.
Why blog about my life with diabetes? Like I said earlier, I have been a consumer of information in social media, specifically in blogs, twitter and facebook. Now I want to contribute as well, however meager my contribution may be.
There are so many misconceptions about diabetes that I encounter daily. First and foremost is when I hear people say stuff like; “He got diabetes because of a lazy lifestyle.” I get so irritated that I feel like stepping in letting my fists do the talking. I am hoping that at least a few who read my posts will change their preconceived notions about diabetes and get better informed. I also feel that having a place to vent when I am down would help me.
So friends, whether you like or don’t like what I write, please do leave comments.
PS1: Copy pasted from my personal diabetes blog
diabeticworld.wordpress.com...
PS2 : This is something I wrote about an year back about Diabetes in India, in the famous diabetesmine website. Please do read.
Welcome to Diabetes India!
Everyday is a Diabetes Awareness day 🔵
A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF DIABETIC ASSOCIATION OF INDIA.
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