It's EXTEMELY personal...

My story starts like many stories that stem from a bit of misfortune, to ignorance, to most of the stages of grief, and finally to conquering my fears and moving on, despite the adversity I was facing.

Let me warn you, this is a VERY long story, so I will provide an executive summary. If, however, you have a bit of time, I hope the longer version of the story will give you a bit more insight into what happened next, and why.

The short version:

I am a diabetic, and I developed a platform called Diabetes and Me: https://diabetesandme.co.za. My late diagnosis of Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 prompted me to do some soul searching, and to undo years of ignorance, and develop my own solution for managing my Diabetes. This story deals with how I embraced Diabetes (albeit not becoming all "tjommie-tjommie" with the disease). If the above teaser does not invite you to read further, I invite you to still check out my website. Reading further will give you more insight into the WHY, even though there are various platforms for Diabetes management out there.

The long version:

In 2013 I SHOULD'VE been diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus Type 2, but was not. I was only diagnosed in 2019, after DM2 has had some some great time building a career as a body-wrecker inside me... Let's go back to 2013 where this all began.

It started with little things. From time to time, I would get little sores (from paper cuts, scrapes or insect bites) on my skin that would not heal for over a month. I would get tingling in my legs, and my head would occasionally feeling heavy, I would have unexplained headaches, odd itches, and other aches and pains.

At first, I thought it was just the old age creeping up on me, work stress, family life, and so on and so forth ad nauseam. And some of the odd aches and pains were just situational and went away on their own, and some where the result of a relatively sedentary lifestyle -- and old(er) age. I was in my late 30's after all! :-D

I did what many a person does, and Googled a symptom I had, so that I could go to a doctor and feel vindicated when he or she tells me that I have ______________ (insert some form of weird disease name in here).

But, not everything wrong with me was because of the old age. As it turns out, I had other things wrong as well. Unbeknownst to me, from at least 2013 until 2019, DM2 has started to chisel away at my body, meaning that I walked around with undiagnosed and untreated Diabetes Mellitus for 6 years.

But lets step back a bit again - this time to a week or so before I was diagnosed with Diabetes. The first ailment I wanted to get checked out, before being diagnosed, was some strange ache in my shoulder. My mom suffered of arthritis, and I was thinking maybe that was it. PvZ fans will know that Doctor Zomboss is incredibly intelligent, so he knew what he had to do. Doctor Z did some tests, and found that I had higher than normal uric acid. And some other little things that looked a little out of whack, but not being a specialist in those areas, sent me upstairs to the X-Men, so that Doctor X, could do a bit of a more in-depth work-up. When the tests came back, X said: "Dude! You are a full-blown Diabetic!"

First, I was like "Whoooaaah!" Then I was like "WHOAAAHHH!" And then I was like "Whooaaaaahhhh......" And then I ran out of Finding Nemo references and felt extremely hard done by. It was as if I was handed a death sentence. I was lying in a heap for a couple of days, complaining, and mourning, as if I was saying goodbye to life itself, as if it was time to go choose my coffin already.

But, those feelings subsided somewhat, and I got up, and got busy. I went on with life, took my medications, and well, still quite ignorant, tested myself only occasionally, and thought that a reading of 15 mmol/L was reasonable (WTAF, dude), given that it often was 25 mmol/L or higher right after being diagnosed.

I was proud of myself for improving so much, and thus I remained ignorant for some time longer. The Comfort Zone is called that for a reason.

In mid 2023, quite perchance, I had a rather long discussion about DNA with someone at a coffee shop, a conversation with someone I did not know, and, if you know me, you will know how strange that is - I struggle to start conversations - once the conversation is started, I can roll with it, due to a generally good general knowledge, but starting a conversation, especially about mundane topics (How crazy is this heat, hey?"), is really difficult for me. And it is not like I can walk up to a stranger and say something like "What do you think about _______________ (insert some deep conversational (or maybe even offensive) topic here)."

The conversation continued to explore how DNA rules so many things in our lives, and not even a week later, I got an email from Fedhealth, my medical scheme, about a DNA test kit hey want to offer me, to see if my chronic medication is still working for me the way it should.

I found that odd, and as if I am supposed to take this seriously, because it did not quite feel like a coincidence that DNA came up twice in less than a week for me - it is not typically something that I would discuss or think of much in my daily life and family and friend circles.

I got tested with this DNA kit, and learned that my medicine is only absorbed at a rate of 20%, meaning I was grossly undermedicated for my Diabetes. Now, I felt that my DM2 management should take bit more priority in my life, and I decided to take this out of the hands of Doctor X, and decided to go to the CDE (Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology) in Houghton, and get this managed properly. As it turned out shortly after starting with the CDE, there were blood tests done in 2013 that indicated that I was Diabetic already, and, had I been informed, I would've had the necessary treatment then already, and the damage would've been less.

This was the trigger for me to stop being ignorant, and I educated myself more about the disease. My feelings of being hard done by returned again for a little while, but being the person I am, I bounced back with a vengeance, and educated myself, a layman, about Diabetes.

I evaluated various apps and tools such as MySugr, and others, and found them to be not quite what I wanted. Being a web developer by trade, I have decided to develop my own.

The result is Diabetes and Me - take a look at https://diabetesandme.co.za.

All my research have confused me initially. You find 50 different sites, and get 50 different opinions. I have learned that Diabetes have some traits that are the same for almost everyone, but also some symptoms that not everybody have, and other symptoms that very few people have.

I have learned that lifestyle choices does not necessarily (and most likely not) cause Diabetes - that you have a genetic disposition to it or not, and that something triggers it. But, while (probably) not causational, lifestyle choices definitely exacerbates it. I have learned that underlying conditions can make things worse, and comorbidities put you at higher risk. Lack of exercise, and other factors play their itty-bitty (albeit gnarly) roles too. They are a bit like B-grade actors, bickering and moaning (like I did about being hard done by), about not having a more prominent role in my health story. But see, it is MY story, and it is MY decision who gets a say in my life.

I have decided to build Diabetes and Me as a platform to track MY Diabetes journey and how it affects ME, factoring in MY life, MY history, MY biases, MY ignorance up to that point, and in general, MY everything. I was now literally tickled pink and wanted to know all there is to know, and I wanted to know what factors of my life has an impact on my Diabetes, and what I can do about it.

So, my development project took on a life of its own. It currently has 18 additional modules - from blood pressure, to journaling, from body composition to water intake. How do these things affect MY Diabetes? Do they? What can I learn about my life and my disease from the data that I have available?

Diabetes and Me burned in me. It fueled me (Ironic, because I was doing the burning. Burning the midnight oil for many a month). I started to glean insights that I would never find out from a doctor or a specialist, not because they are stupid or uninformed, but because that doctor is not living in my house. That specialist is not looking over my shoulder at work. That doctor is not going grocery shopping with me.

I have learned what I can eat, what I can't eat. I started to learn what I can do to improve my readings, and what has no effect on me whatsoever. These findings are only valid for me though, and that gave me the idea to convert my little system to a commercial system where I can help others on their journey as well as giving me some annuity income. Diabetes and Me became bigger and stronger, like a little kid that was growing up right before my eyes. They grow up so fast, don't they?

My little baby was officially born on 16 March 2024. Released about 2 weeks before anticipated, as a form of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), with a roadmap of huge plans for the future. I hope that volume 1 of the Diabetes and Me chronicles will have you looking forward to the next installment.

Thank you for reading - and hopefully sharing!

Chat soon!

Kobus