I have a friend who does diabetic foot care. She and I were visiting and I learned a few things. 
Did you know that if you are getting manicures and pedicures that you should let the person doing the service for you know that you have diabetes. 
When I asked her why, she said that a good licensed professional will give extra attention to your hands and feet. They will check for skin condition, nail condition, cuticle condition. They will take extra care when they are cutting nails and cuticles. They will look for damaged skin before they file dead skin off, and they may do it in a different way. 
Finally, the thing that I found the most interesting is that a person with diabetes may not be offered certain manicure and pedicure services because of diabetic health reasons. 
I asked if there were any tips that she could offer for my readers. Here they are: 

1. Wash your feet with soap and a washcloth. Make sure that you get in between each toe, and wash each toenail as well as under the toes. 
2. Get into a routine of how you wash your feet so that you know the entire foot has been cleaned and gently exfoliated with the washcloth. By doing this, you ensure that you are looking at your foot for any issues. 
3. When you are washing the heel of your foot, look at it for cracks in the skin as well as bruising or discolorations. 
4. Don't dry your feet roughly with a towel. Pat them dry, and go in between each toe as well. I asked why, and I was told that you can damage a toenail with rough drying, especially if you have neuropathy. 
5. Treat your feet to a cornstarch based powder, especially if you are going to be in heavy boots. Absorb sweat, and keep your feet cooler. 
6. If socks are leaving deep red indentations on your skin, they are either too small, too narrow, or both. Switch to a larger sock, and preferably a diabetic sock. You can even get them at Dollar Tree now. They feature a looser weave on the part that goes up your leg as well as a lighter elastic so that you don't create issues. 
7. If you are going to wear compression socks, ask your health care provider first. They are not an ideal solution for everyone. 
8. If you notice any skin conditions, loose or damaged nails, or other foot health issues, make an appointment with your doctor. You may have neuropathy, or your foot health may have changed. 
9. If you ever have deep bruising that looks like pooling blood, call your doctor immediately. She said that this could be something major, especially if you don't recall injuring yourself where the bruise is. 
10. Don't go barefoot in the house, especially if you have neuropathy. You may not feel an injury. 

A friend of mine, Joanne, told me that she knew that her diabetes must be "acting up" because her vision was a little blurry in the early evening light on her porch. I asked for clarification and she said that she had noticed that when she had blurred vision, it was time to hydrate, check her sugar and have at least a small snack. 
Vision issues are a well known concern of people that have diabetes. At first, I was shocked by what she said, and then I thought back to a very bad cold that I had a year ago. I felt absolutely awful. No matter what I did, I was tired. All that I wanted to do was sleep. A friend called to check in on me, waking me from my sleep. When I went to answer the phone, I had a hard time focusing on the name displayed on the phone screen. 
At the time, I blamed the vision issue to sleeping so much and being tired. When I was done talking with my friend, I went to the bathroom, had a snack, and got a drink of water. Climbing back into bed, I pulled up social media to have a look at what the world had been doing while I was asleep. The words were still slightly blurred. I grabbed my reading glasses, but there was still a blurred edge to the letters. 
Frustrated, I went back to sleep, blaming it on being "tired". When I woke the second time, everything seemed to be resolved, and I did not think about the incident again until Joanne told me about her blurry vision incident.  
When I went to the eye doctor for an exam, I remembered the incident and relayed it to my eye doctor, expecting them to dismiss it as coincidence. They went into detail about the risks of diabetes that is not in good control or monitoring. Blurry vision can occur when a diabetic is dehydrated because the body is doing everything that it can to keeps all systems go. When you are dehydrated, the actual shape of your eye can change. Your body can be so low on fluids that you are unable to tear properly or unable to tear at all. 
Additionally, dehydration affects your blood sugar levels. As your bodily fluids become more concentrated, your blood sugar levels will rise. It is important to consume adequate water in warmer weather to avoid overheating, which can also spike blood sugar. In cooler weather, we have to be mindful because we may not feel thirsty because we are not hot. 
When my optometrist and I talked, I asked if the 8 glasses of 8 ounces of water a day was the number to aim for. He suggested that I look at some of the water calculators that are online, and to be very honest when I filled in the information to get a good idea of where I needed to be. 
The water calculator that I chose is ​rehydratepro.com/hydration-calculator/ It allowed me to put in all of my information, including the fact that I really don't exersize as I should yet. (Baby steps, but I am not there yet.)
With all of the input, 1.85 liters or, 65.11 imperial ounces is the amount that I should consume every day. (Just barely over the 8 ounces per glass, 8 glasses per day recommendation.) There was even a suggested breakdown of ideal water consumption, 3 glasses in the morning, 3 glasses in the afternoon, 1 in the evening and one at bedtime. 
Here is how I have broken down the consumption to get it all done in a day:
Morning

1. After brushing teeth
2. With antihistamine
3. With snack at work

Afternoon

1. With Lunch
2. With snack at home
3. With supper

Evening

1. With evening snack
2. After brushing teeth

It took a little work to get all the water in, and this is water. Not juice or other beverages. Those are liquids that have to be processed, which is work for my body. Water is a worker. Big difference. 
Since I have made it a point of consuming enough water, my vision problems have not occured again. Even if I am feeling under the weather, I make it a point to keep hydrating, which also helps to flush my system. 
Hydrate for the sake of your vision! 

I had to go to the doctor today for a follow up from my injury. I was very agitated when I arrived because of a coworker needling me about my injury. Normally, I would have let this roll off my back, but when he decided to start picking on me, I didn't feel well, and he was coming at me with a lot of false statements that were meant to inflame. 
Between his comments, me getting irritated, and getting caught in a little traffic, when I arrived to the doctor's office, I was already irritated, to say the least. At the doctor's office, there was a little confusion about the appointment, leading to more irritation on my part. 
The office took my blood sugar reading, and it was high. I was fasting properly, so I was pretty surprised. 
The nurse asked me if I was angry or upset. I told her about the morning so far. She said something that was very scary to think about. "Be careful. Anger in diabetics can cause diabetic rage. Where your blood sugar climbs along with your temper. Something to be mindful of." 
She squeezed my hand and smiled. "Knowing is more than half the battle. Knowing means that you can control your anger, and then, that helps control your sugar. It is an advantage to know that anger is a trigger to how your body processes sugars."
I smiled because she was right. This knowledge was a gift. I thought about how in the past, sensitive discussions had led to me physically feeling very bad, and sometimes confused about what had happened. I would sit and wonder how things had escalated. It was confusing, sitting there on the papered exam table, wondering if a lot of events in my past would have turned out differently had I only known about this diabetes and anger correlation.
As soon as I got home, I went on the computer and started looking at correlations between diabetes and blood sugar. It is all over the internet. There is even a phrase, diabetic rage. It talks about some of the effects of blood sugar on the diabetic who is angry. Looking at all of these web pages made me resolve to take better care of myself so that I do not have to deal with this very dark side of diabetes. It has also made it a bigger priority to look closer at diabetic rage and see what are the best ways of dealing with this. This also means acknowledging that sometimes, with blood sugar affected while having serious discussions, I absolutely was at risk for not only not being at my best, but for having serious health complications. 
I am eternally grateful to this nurse for sharing the information with me about the correlation. This was not even the post that I had intended to write today, but I wanted to write it down and share before I lost all of the intense feelings that happened. 
I will be writing more about this as I learn more, but if you have diabetes, take the time to learn about diabetes and moods affecting your blood sugar as well as the diabetic rage that I shared with you. 
​

The fall was spectacularly stupid. I was trying to maneuver a cracked plastic laundry basket that was too full around a corner of the bed. I tripped over a corner of the bedspread that was out of my siteline because of the basket. I fell to the ground, and a huge gash was bleeding on the middle of my outer calf. 
Everything hurt. The fall was hard. I must have literally laid there for at least 5 minutes, assessing each part of my body that hurt, because there was no one else home at the time. Gingerly, I began flexing and releasing fingers and toes, and then moving onto larger and deeper muscles. I knew that I was pretty banged up. When I went to move my head, the back of my head roared to life with pain receptors. I was assuredly injured.
Going into the bathroom, it was shocking. I had blood going down my face, and from my leg. I bandaged myself up, threw some petroleum jelly on the wounds to stanch the flow of the blood and took some Aleve for pain. 
The next few days were filled with the pain and soreness that you would expect. In about a week to ten days, the cut in my scalp was only a hardened little bump and scab that hurt only if I brushed or shampooed without giving a little tender treatment to the area. By the third week, my head was pretty much healed. The bumps and bruises all over my body were pretty much gone, save for the especially deep ones that were still present, but faded. 
The gash on my calf, though. That was a problem. No matter what I did, that gash was still an ugly purple and burgundy, with literal shades of blue and green in places. It was closed, but with a scab. I did not know that wound care was an issue with people that have diabetes. I researched cuts. and finally, at the one month mark, I decided that I needed to go see the doctor. 
The doctor looked at the cut, asked how it happened, and looked at the healed cut on my head as well. He gave me a couple of prescriptions, some instructions on bandaging and wound care, and I was sent home. 
At the two month mark, when I was finishing the last of the cortisone cream that I was prescribed, the cut really didn't look any better. It was sealed, but still very angry deep red and purplish at the cut. The skin felt thinner there, and I was embarrassed to wear shorts, dresses, or anything that showed my calf, because it was so shocking that strangers would ask what happened. So, I basically lived in leggings worn under a dress or anything else. 
I called the doctor, and he said that I should come back in, because it should be healed by now. At that visit, he said that I might have something call fragile skin. That meant that it could take me a little longer to heal. He said that because it was sealed close, we were just in a waiting game for the discoloration and sensitivity to heat and cold to come to and end. 
It took that wound nearly 8 months to heal completely, to where there was no discoloration, and no abnormal sensitivity or numbness. 
Here is what I would have done differently now, knowing that I am a diabetic:

1. Gone to the doctor as soon as possible. They would have properly cleaned the wound and come up with a care plan instead of me running around all over the internet, trying to figure out the best way to heal this gash. 
2. Taken photos from the very beginning so that I could properly assess if I was healing, or if there was no progress. Additionally, it would have given the doctors who were seeing me the same information without having to wonder if we were successfully communicating with one another. 
3. Created a folder, a literal folder with printouts from the doctor, copies of the injury photos and everything relating to the incident so that if I were referred anywhere else for treatment, that office had the same information. 
4. Asked questions about how long the healing time could be on the short and long side of things. I had no idea of how long that deep cut should take to heal, so there were times that I was overly concerned and other times where I should have been more proactive. 

Being proactive is something that everyone should do for themselves, but with wound care and diabetes, there can be some serious risks if that wound does not heal. Since this has happened, I have learned of people losing fingers, toes, limbs, and even dying because their wounds did not heal properly. My head healed fine, but when my calf was healing, I had strange tingling sensations, numbness, burning, and the very strange sensitivity to heat and sunlight. 
If you have a wound, call your doctor and do what they tell you. Ask if they have hand outs about wound care for diabetics, and any other resources to make sure that you are doing all that you can do for your health. If you don't get help from your physician, ask for a referral. Your doctor should be a partner in your well being.