The big fat diabetes solution
Greg Perry stared down at the hole in his left foot. A few months earlier it was just a raw blister caused by his boot, but now the wound spread like a fried egg across his sole—a hollowed pink yolk surrounded by grayish-white flesh that peeled up and crusted in burnt yellow edges.
His Toronto foot and ankle specialist, Christopher Lu, was blunt. “What’s happening out here,”he nodded to the ugly diabetic foot ulcer, “is also happening in here,” he said, tapping lightly on Perry’s chest.
“The way you’re going Greg, you’re going to die. That fat around your belly is also around your organs. It’s killing you.”
“I want to live to see my grandkids,”Perry thought afterward, as he slumped in his car and started to cry.
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His older brother Roy had diabetic foot ulcers too, but they had turned dark and gangrenous. Somewhere in the world, doctors amputate a diabetic foot or limb every 30 seconds. There are 73,000 amputations of diabetic ulcers every year in the United States alone. Roy had his left leg amputated at the knee. After that, he used to use his right foot to push his wheelchair around.
Because diabetes had deadened his nerves, he hadn’t felt the pressure wound this was causing, and a blister festered and spread up his calf. Roy was scheduled to have his right leg amputated, too, but he had died of a heart attack first. He was 68. Greg was 62.
He didn’t really need Dr Lu to tell him his diabetes was out of control. He had been diagnosed with Charcot
