Health Department holds diabetes support group open house

Nov. 3—Blake Vickers

The Madison County Health Department held an open house event for their diabetes educators and diabetes support group on Tuesday.

Led by a team of expert diabetes health educators, the support group brings together members of the community with diabetes to learn and help treat their condition.

Due to the pandemic, the group had to go virtual for its meetings. The group has been meeting in-person again recently, but is capable of going online if need be.

According to a 2018 behavioral risk study from the state, the number of Kentucky adults diagnosed with diabetes has jumped from 6.5% to 13.7% since 2000. One in seven adults live with the condition and Kentucky is the 8th highest state in the U.S. for diabetes prevalence.

On a more local level, 9.7% of adults in the Bluegrass region of the state where Madison County resides have been diagnosed with diabetes. On average, those diagnosed with diabetes make 200 decisions a day about their care due to the condition.

Apart from educating, the health department's program is also focuses on teaching prevention methods, self-management techniques, and providing moral support.

The educators for the group are dietician Margaret Maupin-Story and nurse Laura Shelton. Maupin-Story is also a master level diabetes educator and certified diabetes care and education specialist.

"We teach diabetes self-management classes... We're under the umbrella of the state and the state program is Healthy Living with Diabetes. We're accredited by the American Diabetes Association, the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists," Maupin-Story explained. "We have to prove every year that we're making a difference in each person we're seeing in our classes."

The classes are free and split up into two four-hour sessions.

As November is National Diabetes Month, the health department decided to put on the open house to help let Madison County and its surrounding area know what local resources are being offered to those with diabetes.

According to healthcare officials, only 7% of those newly diagnosed with the condition go into self-management programs.

"It may not be the medical provider's fault. It may be that the patient just didn't want to accept they had been diagnosed with diabetes. They may not have had that program available to them," Maupin-Story said of the statistic.

For those first diagnosed with the condition, educating themselves about it is of the utmost importance.

"As probably many of you know, when you first receive that diagnoses it's pretty daunting, and you may feel a little overwhelmed. As with anything, once we have some information about it... we understand that we can manage it," Shelton said.

Many afflicted with diabetes do not know that they have it.

Shelton and Maupin-Story advised that regular check ups and blood work were very important, but shared some symptoms to be suspicious of which can be caused by high blood sugar.

"Your body is reacting to the body by maybe making you very thirsty. You tend to have to go to the bathroom and urinate a lot, because your body is trying to flush out that extra blood sugar," Shelton said. "You can get blurry vision, because some of the extra sugar settles into the lens of your eye. It's kind of like looking through a cloudy window. You can be fatigued and actually be hungry because your cells aren't getting the glucose they need."

Regarding diet plans for those afflicted, the healthcare educators at the health department teach carb counting.

Some members of the support group have been part of it for well over a decade. Each of them has had a different experience regarding diabetes.

"When I was diagnosed with diabetes, my doctor put me on medication. and I said to myself, not knowing, 'I'm on medication, I can still do what I've been doing.' My A1C got way high, and I got sick. I literally got sick, then I found out about the diabetes program. I took the two-day class and was really amazed. I was taught a lot and have been here, I think, eight years... I love my diabetes class, the friends I have made and the people I have met," John Eliott said.

When he started the classes, Elliott had to take four shots of insulin per day.

With the information he's learned in the class, he said he now only needs to take one shot a day. Diabetes runs in Elliott's family and said he has lost his mother, grandmother, and father-in-law to the condition.

Ron Jones said he joined the group in 2006 after coming across them at the Madison County Fairgrounds.

"When I first was diagnosed with diabetes, I was scared to death. I read about it, and that scared me even more just reading about it. I'm a person with no diabetes in my family. I'm the only one. I was kind of on my own," Jones said. "I believe one important factor of this class is the information that we share between us — that we don't hear from our doctors... that we learn from just sharing between us."

Susan Beck said she found the program after her husband was diagnosed with diabetes.

Her husband is a professor at Eastern Kentucky University and asked his wife to attend the classes for him and relay the information to him due to his busy class schedule.

Beck said her husband was diagnosed with end stage renal disease and she stepped in as an organ donor. Soon after, however, Beck was also diagnosed with diabetes.

"I'd like to say how much the county health department — how important all of you are, because of the services you provide. I think a lot of the public doesn't understand what you do in all kinds of areas for all of us," Beck said. "Because of what I had learned through the classes, I was able to not only to help my husband so he could continue his work. I also, because of all of you, was helping myself. We were helping each other as a family."

The group's next class is set for Nov. 7 and Nov. 9. To register for the class, call 859-228-2044.