G'Day All,
I just found this site through a link from another diabetes website I participate on... I have been T1 since age 4, so really don't remember life without this disease.
So far, complications are minimal, even though I've never been really conscientious about regulating BG levels. Right now, A1c is 6.4, usually runs around 7. My wife is, by far, my most important asset; she know when I'm hypo long before I do (I'm one of the 3-5% of engineered insulin dependent diabetics that are hypo-unaware -- thanks to the FDA's Fast-Track approval of Humalin) and has saved me from many problems as a result.
I grew up in a small town in ND and had a family Dr. that gave me the best advice of all the 13 Dr.s I've had since. He told me to always remember that diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate metabolism and keeping simple carbohydrates out of my diet was the best thing I could do (he added that before insulin, he kept his diabetic patients alive for years by eliminating carbohydrates from their diets; this was decades before anyone ever heard of the Atkins diet). He also told me that since kidney failure was a common diabetic problem and the best way to prevent kidney problems was to keep lots of fluid flowing through the kidneys. That was before the advent of diet sodas (Tab hadn't made it to the market yet) and he said any non-sugar containing beverage would do the job (so I drank lots of coffee, even at an early age, and still do). Of course that was before all the research on the caffeine related complications, etc.
At this point, the only complications I have are probably more age related than diabetes related; a minor bit of neuropathy in my toes is probably the only diabetes related problem, but it's not really serious. My weight control challenge is probably due more to age-declining hormone levels (testosterone/estradiol ratio is way too high on the E2 side) and my ED is most likely to be age related since C, L or V pills work just fine for me (C is certainly the preferred option due to its 36 hr. half-life).
I am now involuntarily retired; Congress in it's rush to make it appear they'd really addressed security issues, gave employers in the transportation industry a requirement to do a background-check before offering employment. This gives employers the license to outsource pre-employment screening that allows them to legitimately age discriminate. They do this by requiring applicants to provide their SSN at the time of application. They then outsource this "security screening" to data brokers that eliminate applicants based on criteria known only to the employer and the broker; the brokers use resources like the Medical Information Bureau (MIB is an insurance industry owned database that knows everything about those of us with diabetes, and our SSN, of course, allows immediate age determination) to eliminate applicants that are either high-risk due to either age or a pre-existing medical condition.
