Sparing the details, a colleague of mine recently had his big toe amputated due to diabetes. I wondered why being diabetic could lead to this as it’s common.
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It’s a culmination of different things. For starters, your feet get the least amount of blood versus the rest of your body, they are the furthest thing from your heart. Now, toss in diabetes which can affect blood circulation, and your feet now get less blood flow than before (assuming we’re talking about a person with unmanaged diabetes). Now, add in the nerve damage in the feet caused by unmanaged diabetes. Now, you have the conditions for slower healing and not feeling the injuries done to the feet.
I venture to guess most people don’t regularly check their feet unless they FEEL something wrong. Well, if we apply this to an unmanaged diabetic who has an unknown foot injury, then we are on the grounds for amputation (depending on how severe the injury is). Minor cuts can become sites for infections the body can’t fight off due to the poor blood flow in the feet. Allowing these infections to fester results in gangrene and then amputation.
All in all, the condition for amputations involves a few factors which are easier in diabetics and even the most well controlled diabetics are not immune to these conditions. As a type 2 diabetic of almost 24 years dealing with some other shit related to the disease (vision loss from retinopathy), we are more susceptible to things non-diabetics generally don’t have to worry about.
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