Diabetes and me: how silent killer caught up with NHS chief

[Northerner]

David Nicholson ran the NHS, responsible for 1.35m people. Then, suddenly, he realised what it was to be a patient.

'I just knew something was wrong with me. For several months I had been becoming increasingly, unusually tired and was needing to go to the toilet five or six times a night. I knew it wasn't overwork or stress but didn't know what it could be. My wife Sarah-Jane thought I was just a bit rundown.

This was towards the end of 2012. However, the travelling involved in being chief executive of the NHS, the birth of my daughter Rosa that November and the fact that I'd just moved house meant I didn't get round to seeing my GP until Christmas Eve, a while after the symptoms appeared.

Pretty much right away my GP said: "It sounds like diabetes to me". He took some blood, put it into a machine and it showed that my blood glucose level was way beyond what it should be. That confirmed that I had type 2 diabetes.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/16/diabetes-me-nhs-chief-david-nicholson

 

[robert@fm]

Once again it's the usual rubbish about "T2 is self-inflicted". 🙄 An unhealthy lifestyle may increase the risk, but the only way to get T2 is fundamentally to have the metabolic faults which add up to it, and that means genetics.

And a breakfast of "bacon, egg, sausage, tomato and fries" sounds mostly healthy to me, except of course the fries and possibly the sausage to a small extent.