Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE HUMAN COST OF DIABETES REVEALED
Warning as most amputee victims suffer type 2
ALMOST four people have a limb, finger or toe amputated each week in Northern Ireland because of diabetes.
But most of those going under the knife suffer from type 2 – a largely avoidable condition.
Over three quarters of the 908 people who have lost body parts to the fast-growing disease in the last five years are non-insulin dependent according to new figures from the Department for Health.
Peter Mcauley is one such man. The 59-year-old didn’t even know he had type 2 diabetes when he ended up in hospital with a gangrene toe that almost cost him his foot, ankle and half his shin.
He said: “I didn’t realise what it was until it was too late. I had signs, but I thought it was just the flu, I didn’t even know I was diabetic.”
That was at the start of 2012, when Peter put his light-head, dizziness, cold sweats, aches and pains down to winter.
But in “a man thing to do”, the civil servant decided to self-medicate instead of seeing a doctor.
He added: “I was showering, washing and dressing and putting Savlon spray on it. It didn’t seem to be healing, but it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.
“I gradually started to feel more unwell until one morning in February 2012, I woke up and my leg was three times the size it would normally have been and was hard as a brick.”
It was only when a colleague at the Department of Health took him to the Ulster Hospital that the extent of his injury came to light.
With no feeling in his feet, Peter had no idea he had a bone poking out of his gangrenous big toe, and had contracted sepsis as a result. But the cause of it all was only revealed when the nurse gave him an insulin injection. He said: “At that point the penny really dropped. Only then did I realise all the classic signs were there... dryness of the mouth, going to the toilet, blurred eyesight, but I never really put them together.”
For the next six days Peter was pumped full of fluid and antibiotics in a bid to kill the infection, but still he faced the possibility he could lose the whole foot above the ankle.
Following a transfer to the Royal Victoria Hospital a consultant operated and the Belfast man said he was thanking his lucky stars when he “woke up and saw the bandage on my foot... as there was still something there”.
But a year later and Peter was back under the knife, losing another toe on the same foot. He said: “I had neuropathy. The nerves die because of the starvation of oxygen.
“It can impact your hands as well. If I lift a boiling pan it takes about five seconds to register and by the time you set it down your hand blisters.”
But Peter’s story is not an unusual one.
Type 2 diabetes diagnoses
SIGNS
Peeing more than usual particularly at night
Excessive thirst
Feeling very tired
Weight loss
Cuts or wounds taking longer to heal
Blurred vision
WHO’S AT RISK?
Over 40s or 25s for Asian people have more than doubled in 20 years.
More than 83,000 people in Northern Ireland were living with the disease in 2017, with many more feared to have it.
Like type 1 or insulin-dependent diabetes, there is an inherited element to type 2 with over-40s more at risk.
Around three in five cases can be avoided through healthy lifestyle choices, but the problem for many is those changes come too late.
Peter said his biggest regret was not seeking medical advice sooner.
Now he has to have his shoes specially made and relies on taxis for journeys of even 500 metres.
Despite the “dark corners” his condition has taken him to mentally and physically, Peter counts himself one of the lucky ones and now uses his experience to help others through Diabetes UK in Belfast.
It offers a number of support services for those living with or worried about the disease.
The charity’s director Jillian Patchett said she would like to see Northern Ireland included in the National Diabetes Audit as we “may be leading the way in lots of aspects of care”.