Do I Dislike Oral Medications - Part 1

Medications in my opinion are our best friend and potential enemy

Before going on, we appear to have picked up 2 people from Russia, 1 from Serbia, and 1 from South Korea.  For all you new readers, I hope you enjoy the blog and do get something out of it.  Please share with your friends if you find it worthy of your approval.  Again, please make comments out here you want or you can email me at bob.dant@gmail.com

I also want to apologize as I took yesterday off, it was my 4 month anniversary of my journey when I started my turn around to managing this beast.

BS - 107 fasting this morning.

BP - 110/65 (my home machine) - HR 55

I had many directions I could go today with this blog but want to reward the individual who left a comment wondering why I appeared to be against oral medications.  She is a person who has a lot of good information and I met through the ADA community message board.  The link to the community message board is http://community.diabetes.org/ and I think you will have to be registered ADA member to get a log in.  Please go to the community if you want far more information than I am going to provide in this blog. I have used it and will use some of the information I gain in this blog.

Back to my feelings on medications.  I broke this in to two parts as this could be a lengthy post.  First to explain why my mindset is simply "Better to utilize God's medicine cabinet versus man's" and the second part will provide some research that allowed me to look at more natural remedies versus the oral medications.

As far as scaring me to death - just mention a needle and I am gone.  So when insulin was being discussed - my motivation for change went sky high.

Growing up with a Mom who was against medications

My mother passed away when I was 17 years old.  So my memory of her has limitations but this is not one of the areas.  I was in eighth grade when I was thrown from a horse and landed on my head.  I was out of it for a few hours and hurting for about a week.  Time healed everything - or we thought - until I was in my freshman year of  high school and started to develop migraine headaches - say once every 3 months.  They were so bad I was delirious;  maybe I could use the same argument for why I am delirious now - wonder if I could get my wife to buy into the theory.

Anyway - by the time I was a junior in high school, I was having migraines weekly, missing school, and taking more medications to treat the "symptoms" not the root cause of the problem.  My mother took me to a Chiropractor - talk about a gutsy move in the 70s - and he gave me an Xray to show that my vertebrate had been dislocated and was pressing up against my skull.  Once he got things back in place, I have not had a migraine headache since.  All the time the medical profession was surprised I could be healed.

That was my first experience with getting over an a ailment without using medications and it created the basis for my opinions as they were formed when I was a young man.

Brother who was drugged to make it through Vietnam

My second experience, and one that followed closely behind the first, involved my brother and what the Army did to him during Vietnam.  Jim was a very nervous kind of kid growing up.  I did not know that for sure as he was 7 years older than me.  I heard it from my dad and from Jim.  He enlisted in the Army, like so many of us Iowans do as we think it our duty to server; regardless of the war or circumstances.

To make it through boot camp, they had to put him on medicines to help him stay calm through the training.  He was never to go to combat as his nerves could not handle it.  The title says it all, he was sent to Vietnam and to make it through that crazy war he was placed on heavy duty tranquilizers and other medicines.  When he returned from Vietnam he was a mess with drugs and drinking.

He stayed in the Army and after 10 years of loyal service, they decided he was an addict and let him out.  Maybe the first prescribed addict I met in my life.  I was just heading into the military myself at the time and was very disappointed in the military for the way it treated my brother.  But since I had enlisted, I had no choice but to do my best.

You can rest assured, that when the Marines mentioned any drugs - my answer was no.  I was in boot camp and developed bronchitis and the drill Instructor had to fight me to take medicines.  They worked.  At that time, I was thinking of a career in the Corps.

Medicines that saved my life

Now we can go to the flip side and talk about how medicines saved my life in the time when I needed them most - when my diabetes was at its worse.  There is no question I would have not made it this far without medicines.  So I do owe my life to medicines and thankful they were there.

But in the very end, I am still a believer that God can be the best pharmacist in the world and if there is something natural I can do - then I will do it.  Does that mean my way is right for everyone - NO!  I am willing to say it is working for me and if there is someone who might feel the same, then I hope what I have found that works for me might works for them.

I will carry this conversation on in the next post to discuss some research that helped me move forward without fear.

God bless each of us who suffer with this disease and only by sharing and caring, will we have the support group necessary to make our life easier to manage.

Bob,