Footsie

  Most doctors go on about looking after your feet and they are right on this one. They are one of the first things that can show signs of high blood sugars, apart from the actual blood sugar and can be one of the first things that can cause a lot of trouble.
  They high sugars can cause lots of things, like we have discussed through out this blog and another way for the body to show signs is infections. Little infections on the side of the nail, real painful and can bet worse real quick if not looked after. I used to always have one some where on one of my toes, not often on the big toes but they where a constant and painful. All you could do is treat the infection and try and get your bloods down, although these seem to happen when it's a prolonged sugar high rather then the odd one here and there. If these aren't looked after or treated then they can develop into worse infections and later even in amputation if it's that bad. There are a lot of diabetics out there that have had horribly high bloods and horrible control for so long that things start to give, the feet is one.
  But that's not the only thing that can happen, of course. As you know I have nerve damage, although now it's getting better, it was so bad at one point that I couldn't feel most of my feet, so that mean what I was walking on. One huge factor of this is you can't feel the infection growing at first only when it's bad, but also you can't feel when your shoes don't fit properly. I had huge amount of blisters, so much so that I now have scars on my little toes and the back of my heels for them. Now blisters normally aren't to bad, just annoying and painful, sometimes you have to go through the pain to break in a good pair of shoes, that's life, but you have to watch them and be careful. I couldn't feel them at all at one stage just like not feeling the infections. Because of this I would go on wearing the shoes all day, often when you know you might get blister you either pack another pair of shoes or you buy another cheap pair. There where several occasion where I'd be out all day not notice that they had been building and then get home to find that I had blood in my show, there's only so much the skin can take from friction. Obviously this was bad, but you would just go on a deal with the situation, not wear those shoes again for a while, then try again until they where broken in. (and I'm not talking heels or sandal types here more like the converse/trainer types) But there was this once when I went to visit family in Canada, just had to have these cool trainers and I wore them for the rest of the trip and didn't notice that a blister was forming and getting bigger, after a while I did and tried to sort it out, it was healing. It was one of the first days back home and I hadn't been doing much in the day, leg was hurting a bit but didn't take much notice, until later that evening we when to the shop to get something for dinner and I couldn't put weight on my heel.
  When we got home Ma had a look and was horrified. I had this huge blister that wasn't a blister so much any more and redness and swelling going down my foot and up the back of my leg. It looked like I had blood poisoning. I could loose my leg if it wasn't treated soon. So we went to the A&E. Turns out it wasn't blood poisoning (so lucky with that!) and all they did was take the dead skin off and bandage it up, told me to keep it clean and look after it. But because of that I am so paranoid about blisters now, I'd never want it to get that bad again, all because I couldn't feel it happening until it got too bad.
  If you can't feel what your wearing on your feet then you should be doubly looking after them, keeping them clean and making sure if anything does happen that it gets looked after properly and straight away. It's easy for things to get bad and then that's when it get worse. I was extremely lucky, I could easily have lost my foot because of my stupidity.
  This is why the doctors look at your feet and lecture you about their care. So I'll say it too. Look After Your Feet!.

Nails

  Like a lot of people out there I like to look after my nails. They are the only thing now a days that I can do what ever I like with, long, short any colour, because of work now. But like anything on the body they are one of the things to suffer when you get sick, no matter what you have, if your ill long enough they start to show it.
  I like to have my nails long, not to much so, but I prefer them that way. I keep the nail varnish nice, make sure it's not chipping. Buff, trim and moisturise and do a general care every time I repaint them. But it was really hard to keep them nice and try to grow them long when I was ill. Having been so ill for so long made them brittle and hard to look after. They started to warp too. You could really tell on my thumb nails, going slightly wavy and getting worse the longer I stayed ill.
  They snapped so easily and in such jagged ways too, nothing seemed to help. I used strengtheners and special gels but it was all useless.
  But when I got better my nails stopped breaking so much, they still do now and then, but when you work in retail they have a habit of doing that and now that I'm out of retail stabbing hard surfaces with your finger doesn't help matters either (I have a bad habit of doing that for some reason). But they don't break spontaneously. They look healthy, I didn't realise that nails could look sick and that mine did, until they weren't anymore.
  You have to keep them healthy just like anything else on your body. I might take better care of mine then most people, or go a little over board in caring for them now, but I don't want to end up with them being like they where. I don't ware false nails because even though gel is better then acrylic they still damage the nail bed. I might ware nail varnish a lot, but I do all I can to protect them as much as possible from the varnish.
  It's hard looking after something you never thought could be a problem to start with. All these small things that go wrong that you never think would be linked all add up in the end.
  I think we take the small things for granted in everything, but it's the small things that count in the end.