Are you looking for a good book to take along on your vacation this summer? All month ASweetLife’s bloggers and contributors will be sharing some of their favorites.An important book about diabetes is “Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness” by Chris Feudtner. The New England Journal of Medicine said, “The introduction of insulin in 1922 transformed the acute, rapidly fatal course of a diabetic coma into a chronic illness that could be monitored and managed over the years. As a historian and a pediatrician, Feudtner is sensitive to the ironies implicit in insulin therapy. This treatment often stopped cold the ravages of ketoacidosis yet created in its wake a host of late complications in the vessels of the retina, brain, heart, and kidneys of patients with diabetes. The transformation of disease, as exemplified by the case of diabetes, is a valuable and elegant concept that serves to remind us that the tally sheet for medical science must carry a column for debit as well as credit.”
This is not a beach book, but it is a book that I would recommend to everyone living with diabetes.
The most telling quote from this book was the following statement:
“The transformation of disease, as exemplified by the case of diabetes, is a valuable and elegant concept that serves to remind us that the tally sheet for medical science must carry a column for debit as well as credit.”