Wow, Jeanne, you are a totally caring friend. I hope your friend appreciates you. There's not too much you can do. I admit to having a year or so of denial before starting to be responsible about my diabetes. It's tough to deal with. I would just say to encourage her to 1) see a doctor as soon as she can, at least as soon as insurance kicks in 2) check her sugars more often and try and keep a journal of what she eats, her sugar levels, and when she takes her meds. She can show it to her doctor and he/she will better be able to help her. and 3) stick with the low carb diet. It really is the best thing she can do food-wise for her diabetes. And even if that's all she does, it will be a big step in the right direction. Good luck, again!

Jeanne, you are indeed a very caring friend.

There is one possibility that I dont' think anyone has mentioned yet...that your friend's blood sugars were far higher than they are now and are actually beginning to come down. I get the impression from your posts that your friend isn't in the habit of checking her blood sugar even daily which is very dangerous for a diabetic. Right now, she should be checking it several times a day; fasting, 2 hours after each meal and at bedtime and she should keep doing this until she's getting normal readings consistantly.
Blood sugars do respond positively to low carbing, but it isn't always an immediate response. If blood sugars have been very high or a person has been diabetic for quite a while (and uncontrolled), it may take a couple of months for those blood sugars to get into normal ranges, especially without the help of medication. Often medication is needed to help get the blood sugars into a normal range until the patient can manage it themselves on diet alone and it's important to normalize those blood sugars as quickly as possible.
It concerns me that your friend is using her medication (I believe it's Glicizide) to cover carb binges or only when she checks her blood sugar and notes that it's high. Generally, this is not what medication is to be used for and it's called self-medicating and can cause serious problems such as unexpected hypos if you don't know what you're doing (and sometimes even if you do...that's why you need to work with your doctor!). For it to really help, your friend needs to get on a regular medication schedule with the right medication until she can control her blood sugars with diet alone. For that, she will need a trip to the doctor and at least a few blood tests. From what you're reporting, I wouldn't be too surprised if she would get a HBA1C test that it would be between 11 and 12 or even a bit higher which would show that her blood sugars have been elevated for more than just a few weeks. You obviously can't force her to go to the doctor, but I'd suggest that you really encourage her to do so. Diabetes isn't a disease to be taken lightly and messed around with on your own and I can't believe that any serious doctor would let her continue to have blood sugars this high without at least suggesting that she get on a regular medication shedule at least short-term. Mine was about as high as hers is when I first saw my doctor about it and he was very concerned and put me on medication immediately!
She needs a professional right now (as well as a very caring friend!), encourage her to get the help she needs and start getting control of her health.

Thank you for your input Lisa

I called my friends answering machine and read it to her.

I KNOW she has been in denial off and on for years. I think she feels *WHY ONLY ME?* because she got it when she was only 13/14 years old.

I now tell her that she has a 1/3 of the US population to share it with and another 1/3 of the population are like me (living with chronic intestinal candida/fungal infections). The result of diet change is the same for both her and I so I tell her to stop acting like a victim and realize how LUCKY she is that she has symptoms that tell her to shape up!!!
I do feel lucky because I have more than one reason to do Atkins!

If I was doing Atkins, ONLY to lose weight, that wouldn't be enough of an incentive for me at my *advanced* age (cough, cough, 37, cough, cough, getting old, stagger).

Jeanne...

In a way, I can understand how your friend feels. Face it...it sucks to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, especially when you're still a teenager with your whole life ahead of you. Even when you're [ahem] forty-something, it still sucks.
BUT...throwing yourself a decades-long pity party doesn't do a darned thing about what's going on inside your body; then you're just a depressed person with a chronic illness and you're still no closer to doing anything productive about it.
As I see it, there are several options that a person in this sitation has:

1) Sit around feeling sorry for yourself, do nothing about the problem and get worse.
2) Sit around feeling sorry for yourself, do something grudgingly and halfheartedly about your disease and hope you don't get worse.
3) Feel sorry for yourself, do something about your disease (diet, medication, whatever it takes) and at least get better physically.
4) Forget about feeling sorry for yourself, face your disease head on, do whatever it takes to keep it in check and resolve to do your darndest to not let it deprive you of a long, healthy and happy life.

Option 4 sounds like the best option for me.

This is one of the few diseases where the person who is sick has a great deal of control over how sick they will let themselves get by either chosing to do nothing or by chosing to make the lifestyle changes needed to gain and keep good control (diet, exercise, medication). Diabetes is no longer a death sentence as it was as little as 80 years ago. There have been great advances in what we know about how to treat it effectively and with the right program, many diabetics go on to lead long and happy lives. Yes, you will need to change some things, like what you eat, but if it actually makes you healthier and helps you live longer how awful is that???

When life hands ya lemons, grab some Splenda and make some low carb lemonade.

I hear ya Lisa and have quietly stood by her for years, knowing she was hurting herself but knew she was in deep denial in her 20's. I remember the days (about 8 years ago before I was sick) when I'd make peanut butter pie and she would come over and BEG for a piece of it. She would have it and then IMMEDIATELY fall asleep and I could barely wake her up - used to scare the HELL OUTTA ME!!! I stopped giving her any sugary things when she came over after two episodes like that.

I know first hand what it is like to not come to terms with a disease - I have a chronic fungal infection in my gut (which can lead to diabetes) and wasn't dealing with it through my diet. Atkins gave me the control over food that I've been needing for a long time (whew).

I feel it may be time a friend told her it was ok to control her weight and her life. Case in point, her parents helped her to buy a house last year and she confessed to me that she didn't even own it - they did and they did not let her pick out anything about the newly built home in the subdivision - not even the paint color.

I really worry because in the year I haven't seen her these health conditions became known to me or were glaringly obvious:
-she admits to being sugar/carb addicted (in the past it was fats)
-her hair has thinned
-she mentioned being on an ace inhibitor
-she has had her large toe on her foot amputated and was hospitalized
-she has a huge hole on the bottom of her foot currently because she
was at a bbq, barefoot (what is she thinking?) and stepped on a
burning coal (odd story, I know).
-she has gained roughly 50-100 lbs
-she is self-medicating her foot wound and taking antibiotics she got
from a friend who is an RN (I urged her to see a foot doc and she
finally did to have the CALLOUS removed and have him give his ok).
- she had a kidney infection (mild? I dunno) about 3 or 4 years ago
- she smoked a pack a week about 3 years ago and had such high
blood pressure that a friend who was a nurse told her she better stop
or she'd surely die (she stopped).

I honestly believe she has been in denial to some degree the whole time. It is just that now, I feel time is running out for the mismanagement of it and the health issues are catching up with her. She is smart and I know she can successfully control it.

This person is in grave danger. She needs competent, professional help immediately. An infected foot wound in the presence of the high blood sugars you describe puts her in peril of losing that foot, or worse yet, her leg. She has no business self-medicating anything. She should see Dr. Bernstein. I know he's expensive, but probably costs a lot less than a funeral casket.