I'm beginning to see a need to add to this site a few explanations of comments by me which shouldn't require any explanation because they are comments I didn't make. Nothing in life is that simple, however!

It can be downright scary sometimes, the gap between what you think you're saying and what people hear. One example will have to suffice: I was told that I'm doing harm in my blog, by telling people to eat foods (such as breakfast cereals) which many of them cannot possibly consume without driving their blood sugar well above acceptable levels. 

Of course, I had not actually told anyone to start the day with cereal -- but I had admitted to doing so myself, more than once, which apparently amounts to the same thing.

It had not occurred to me that, if I admitted to having eaten cereal for breakfast, anyone would think I'm telling them that they must start eating cereal too. I figured most people with Type 2 diabetes know, far better than I do, what kind of foods they can handle. I also figured most people differ from me in terms of such things as medical history, body weight, and exercise schedule, so no one would even be tempted to assume that what I ate for breakfast today is what they ought to have eaten for breakfast today. Surely, I thought, it went without saying that some people should not have for breakast what I had for breakfast.

On the other hand, now that it's been pointed out to me, I can understand why someone who wondered why I'm describing my daily habits in my blog would come to the conclusion that I'm offering myself as an example of exactly how everybody ought to live. That's not the idea, but I guess I can see why someone would think it was. So, I'd better try to be more explicit about the purpose of my blog. Assuming that people get it, without my explaining it, is probably not working half as well as I imagined.

Ever since my original diagnosis (in February of 2001), I have felt that there just isn't enough encouragement offered to people with Type 2 who want to improve their health by changing the way they live. I don't mean that nobody advises them to exercise and watch what they eat -- I mean that nobody gives them a reason to think that doing those things will improve the situation very much or for very long. So, most people either don't try it, or don't do it persistently enough to see a benefit. They give up too easily. And it's only to be expected that people will give up easily, when the message they keep on getting is that it's probably futile anyway. (I vividly remember sitting in the doctor's office waiting room, reading a magazine article on diabetes which breezily asserted that diet and exercise could help "in a few mild cases", but only temporarily. What if my case wasn't one of the few, the mild? And what was the longest I could hope to make these things work before they failed me?)

Most people with Type 2 don't get to hear any success stories, so I'm trying to tell them one. Not that I can call myself that big a success story, after only 8 years with the disease, but most people have literally no idea that anyone is out there who has made it eight years without medication, has normal blood sugar, and is feeling much better and healthier now than he did at the start of the diabetes adventure. It would have helped me, eight years ago, to know that someone was out there who had succeeded at least to that extent. So maybe it will help someone else to know my story.

What I'm really trying to do in my blog is not to tell people what to eat for breakfast (I don't know what they should eat for breakfast, after all), but rather to demonstrate that a life which, to some extent, resolves around managing diabetes and working hard at staying healthy is not necessarily a boring, awful life -- that it can actually be interesting. That exercise can be part of your social life, and even a source of entertainment, rather than a chore which leaves you no time to do anything fun.

It has been made clear to me, and not always in sympathetic language, that my case history is regarded as extremely atypical -- perhaps so atypical as to be freakish. According to this view, people like me are a minor statistical anomaly; we really don't matter, and should not be heard from. It will only confuse and upset normal Type 2 patients to discover that such cases as mine exist. When I was sent to a diabetes class, and each of us had to introduce ourselves and tell our story, I assumed that the lady running the class would be pleased to hear that I was exercising, and losing weight, and seeing real improvements in my test results; instead she practically ordered my answer stricken from the record, and warned the other students not to expect what I was doing to work for them. Apparently the problem, as she saw it, was that my story would undercut the other students' self-esteem (though it wasn't a problem for her to undercut mine ).

However, what if the difference between me and other Type 2 patients is not that I have an extremely unusual genetic makeup, or an unusual form of the disease, or unusual luck -- but rather that my attitude and approach are different in some useful way? What if I'm unusually determined to do what's required, or unusually reluctant to surrender to the depression and apathy which so often come with this disease? What if I'm actually doing something right that others aren't doing (or aren't doing enough)? If there's any possibility of that, maybe my case shouldn't be ignored after all.

Because of individual variations in medical history, and also individual variations in the nature of the disease, there is no universal approach to managing Type 2 diabetes which will work equally well for everyone. The fact that I don't need to be medicated at this point doesn't mean that I never will, nor does it mean that all Type 2 patients can get by without medication by slavishly imitating my example. On the other hand, let's not forget what most people are so determined to forget: that the lifestyle adjustments I am concentrating on are still necessary even if you are on medication. Life without exercise, for example, is a disease condition, and no pill cures it. You don't really face a choice between exercise and pills: you face a choice between exercise with pills and exercise without pills.

Therefore, if you don't want a miserable life (or a short one), you need to find a way to enjoy doing those things which must be done whether you enjoy them or not. As I've found a way to enjoy such things myself, and it has helped me, and I have found that there is life after diagnosis, I thought it would be helpful to share my experience. That's almost the only point that my blog has, but it seems to me that the point is non-trivial.