Diabetes and Her

A Member Story

When our 27-year-old member visited us for the first time just two months ago, she was struggling with multiple chronic conditions: mature-onset diabetes of the young (MODY, a hereditary type of diabetes known as “mody diabetes”), obesity, gastroparesis (a condition that slows the stomach’s emptying), and cyclic vomiting caused by cannabis use in extreme doses. Insecure housing and depression compound these ills.

Ms. D lives with her mother temporarily due to her housing instability, but their relationship is strained. Though she has been lax with self-care, she has goals: she’d like to find her own apartment, secure a stable job, lose weight, and control her mody diabetes.

In order to get to a place where any of this is possible, however, she needs the kind of care we call “beyond medicine”; that is, she needs housing resources, education on diet and diabetes, and lessons on how to use her continuous glucose monitor, as well as mental illness family support.

Our interdisciplinary care team went to work immediately to help her with all these goals, addressing her housing instability and providing assistance with her chronic conditions care. In just two short months, Ms. D has secured an apartment and is waiting for a move-in date. AbsoluteCare set her up with a Freestyle Libre system, helping her to download the app and review the results at subsequent appointments.

As of this week, Ms. D has cut down her cannabis use by three-quarters (from four times to once a day) and has had no cyclic vomiting episodes. In addition, she is mindful of her chronic conditions care, having missed zero doses of insulin, is regularly monitoring her glucose, maintains improved blood sugar levels, and is now interviewing for certified pharmacy technician positions.

At AbsoluteCare, we go Beyond Medicine™ in providing care to our communities. Getting members involved in their own care while surrounding them with ours allows us all to see significant improvements in health, attitude, motivation, and achievement, which further helps with issues such as insecure housing and mental illness family support. If we can, together, see improvements like these in just under two months, imagine where Ms. D could be next year.