Any cancer patients compare the two? I heard the side effects can be pretty nasty from chemo but as I sit here after just confirming my 325 sugar level feeling extremely ill something tells me dealing with daily sugar swings at least in my case can be just as debilitating as chemo. The one advantage in chemo’s favor is at least its not 24/7 for the rest of your life like sugar swings are.
I don’t think you can compare the two. I have a friend with diabetes who is currently undergoing a very toxic course of chemo. There is no comparison between what she is going through now and what she has gone through over the years with diabetes. The vomiting is horrendous, the nausea truly debilitating, and she still stands a good chance of dying within the next 6 months. In addition to that she can’t eat/drink many things because her taste buds change, she has lost all her hair (eyebrows and eyelashes included) and is possibly going to suffer neuropathy (irreversible probably) from the chemo drugs.
In my experience the blood sugar swings by themselves couldn’t be anywhere near the experience of chemo. I generally just power through hypos and hypers.
e.g. last month I missed two shots (Very busy day in the courtroom) and by 9PM my bg was in the 500’s and I had large amount of ketones. But I pretty much just powered through without any discomfort other than the thirst/trips to bathroom.
But I’ve also been in DKA coma with a two week recovery in the hospital - between the coma, pain, memory loss, week+ hooked to IV’s that may very well trump some of the less unpleasant chemo treatments.
And I’ve also had bad hypos requiring glucagon and 911 calls and trips to the ER. The super duper nausea induced by glucagon in me is probably not too dissimilar to some of the nausea accompanying some chemo treatments. But that only lasted maybe 12 to 18 hours after the glucagon shot.
In “The Day of Battle”, vol. 2 of Rick Atkinson’s 3 volume history of the US Army in Europe during WWII (amazing book, Ike smoked 5 packs of Luckies/ day during the invasion of Sicily!), he recounts that an Allied ship full of mustard gas blew up in an Italian harbor and that the doctors treating the victims noted white blood cell counts that were atypical and used this to develop chemotherapy after the war. To me, I would take diabetes over chemotherapy.
Everyone I know who has done chemo has reported ghastly side effects besides feeling whacked out of your gourd, like BG swings can produce. I look pretty whacked when my BG is 35 but the people I’ve known who are getting chemo treatments generally look worse. A coworker of mine who later died reported that “when I ■■■■, my ■■■ feels like it’s on fire, like 100 times worse than the hottest chili you ever ate…” which is not a side effect I’ve noticed w/ diabetes. Sorry for the raw language but it’s a quote from a dead person whose words deserve to be quoted.