Starting Off

Like many bloggers, I love to write. In the old days, I used to write letters. Remember letters? You typed them out on a manual typewriter, stuck them in envelopes, addressed them, slapped on 3-cent stamps, and sent them on their way.

Those days are gone, and now I send e-mail instead. I also write for fun. I've published a few books related to diabetes, and more unfinished books and stories are sitting in my files waiting for me to have the time to polish them up and find homes for them.

In the past few years, I've been doing some blogging for Health Central's diabetes pages, and I will continue doing this. But I thought it would be fun to branch out a bit with my own blog, which would give me more freedom to branch out a bit in what I say, to post occasional pictures, and mostly just to try something new.

I'm calling this blog "Wildly Fluctuating" because I'm planning to tackle wildly fluctuating topics from the very serious to the very absurd; from basic information that everyone needs to more technical stuff that might be of interest to us old timers to simple musings on the diabetes news of the week. Maybe occasionally something that has nothing whatsoever to do with diabetes. We all need a break.

Diabetes is a serious disease, and we all need to take it seriously. But we also need to take a break from time to time: we need to laugh. Thus I'll try to write something humorous from time to time.

I'll also occasionally discourse on the science of diabetes. When we have diabetes, it's nice to understand the scientific basics of topics like digestion, food composition, drug absorption, and so forth.

Health professionals, including physicians and certified diabetes educators, can provide general guidance and one-size-fits all treatment plans. But we're not all one size, and a treatment plan that works great for me might not work well at all for you. The health care people won't be at our side when we want to eat that chocolate eclair that looks so tasty. We've got to understand how food affects our health ourselves.

I tried to explain the diabetes basics in my book The First Year: Type 2 Diabetes, and the basics of diabetes prevention in Prediabetes. But new material comes out every day, and it never hurts to review what we already know.

I will give my views on the numerous diabetes news items that seem to surface every week, if not every day. The news media tend to simplify things and tell us that type 2 can be prevented by eating some food or type 1 has been cured, when in fact some food or other has been had a slight effect on the incidence of type 2 or type 1 has been cured in mice.

In fact, diabetic mice have been cured zillions of times, and at the current time, your best bet for a diabetes cure would be to be reincarnated as a lab rodent.

I've had type 2 diabetes myself for 13 years now. And I'll occasionally write about my own experiences living with this dragon, both good and bad. However, I do hope I don't become so self-focused that my blog turns into an off-topic daily diary about my favorite toothpaste or a great buy in hamburger at the local grocery store.

And one thing is certain: I promise I'll never, ever upload photos of Spot and Fluffy.

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.*Only because my cats all died on the highway near my house and they haven't been replaced.