I have pretty tight control [a1c in the 5% range for several years!]
I recently fell off my bicycle and “skinned” my left knee. It was beginning to heal nicely when i tripped over a root hiking in woods and opened it up again about a week after the first fall.
It’s now 3 weeks and the injury is completely healed, without any sign of infectionand leaving no scars.
So much for impaired healing in diabetics.
the truth of the matter is that with NORMAL blood glucose, we heal NORMALLY
I’m a 64 year old grandmother, whose grandchildren were impressed with the scraped knee.
Hana
I’m glad you healed normally. However, I think this benefit may not always apply to those with good control. Especially if there was a time in the past of bad control?
I’ve had an A1c in the 5s for 6 months now, and 6’s before that…but years ago I had A1cs in the 10-14 range (I know…horrible!) …and I scar all the time. I took a tumble off my bike a year ago and took about two months to heal (with scarring); if I even nick myself shaving my legs it takes several days to scab over, weeks or months to heal (usually rip the scab off and reform a scab several times), and it always scars.
Wow, I am impressed. It is really nice to hear things like this. My friends are telling me that I have to be less strict about my diet and less of the control freak when it comes to my BG levels but ory confirms that it will all pay off one day.
I get people talking about slackening my control too, but I’m not prepared to pay the price. I’m still only in my mid sixties and would really like to be around to see my grandchildren [currently babies] grow up. In any case I’m a bit of a puritan and believe that doing “what is easy” isn’t often right.
Keep that A1c down Kari and things should improve. You haven’t been there long. Some people scar easily and it’s not that that’s proof of the benefits of good control, it’s the speed and lack of infection which really matters. I have small scars from minor injuries in my youth long before T2 developed.
PS
If you want to "de- fuzz your legs, I’d give that razor a miss and use something safer, such as cream.
Reminds me of what the nurse said during my foot exam a few months ago. She was droning on about how I’m at increased risk of foot problems etc etc and I said, ‘yeah but the risk is high only if blood sugars are consistently high’ and she was absolutely insistent that ‘because you’re diabetic, your blood sugars WILL be high.’
I later found out that I am the only diabetic registered at the surgery who has an A1C below 6. I guess medical professionals are so used to seeing diabetics with high blood sugars. Tight control is the exception! Though yes, it annoys me greatly to read stuff about how 'diabetics are at higher risk of ’ and then when you read the small print, actually it’s prolonged high uncontrolled blood sugars, not diabetes per se. They are not the same thing!
I am glad you healed up quickly. Although I agree that being in good control does help, I also agree with Kari that it is not a guarantee. I have had my A1cs in the 5’s for the last 3 years other than one 6.1 (which still is not that bad). Last summer, I hurt my foot after passing out and had a huge blister on the side. I see a wound specialist and saw him right away. It also closed very fast and he told me that he never saw a diabetic foot do what it was supposed to do before – as a wound specialist, he sees a lot of diabetic wounds that are beyond regular doctors. Right around the same time that I had that wound, I fell and scraped my knees – wound doctor also took a look at those when I was there. My knees took forever to heel.
I’m glad to hear you survived your bike wreck. I have to agree w/ Kari & Kelly that decent control isn’t a guarantee of ‘normal’ healing. It seems to take cuts and scrapes a long time to heal on me. I had a couple of things I went to the doc for to get them checked out and they have always laid on the antibiotics and been very positive about my decisions to get stuff checked out.
