Min. Bernice Walker on the pulpit at Fenimore Avenue United Methodist Church.
Picture by Nelson A. King
After rapidly progressing from pre-diabetes to diabetes, Brooklyn resident Bernice Walker says she is praying fervently to ultimately be diabetes-free.
“With God’s grace, I hope to have the ability to dwell freed from this illness,” Walker, a minister on the 134-year-old Fenimore Avenue United Methodist Church in Brooklyn and native of St. Kitts, the bigger island within the twin-island federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, informed Caribbean Life after Worship Service on Sunday.
Walker, who was identified with pre-diabetes in 2011 and has been “struggling” with diabetes through the years, in addition to with different medical illnesses, stated her A1C went from 6.0 to 7.0 “very quickly.”
A1C is the common of the blood sugar ranges in a single’s physique over a three-month interval; the upper the A1C quantity, the higher chance that one will develop diabetes issues. A1C 4.6 – 6.0 is taken into account regular (doesn’t have diabetes); 5.7 – 6.4 (pre-diabetes); and 6.7+ (diabetes).
On account of her excessive A1C, Walker, an East Flatbush, Brooklyn resident stated her main care doctor prescribed Metformin to regulate her sugar ranges.
“But it surely solely made me really feel worse,” stated the retired medical assistant. “And, with my expertise in that discipline, I’m making an attempt to handle the illness with care.”
She stated she has modified her weight loss program to be extra plant-based, including that “although I do know the physique requires some sugar, I attempt to restrict the portion I devour each day.”
“I additionally found that folks of the Black race endure extra from the consequences of diabetes due to poor vitamin or poverty on an entire,” stated Walker, who has been a member of Fenimore Avenue United Methodist Church, on the nook of Fenimore Avenue and Rogers Avenue, since 1985.
“However what I’ve come to find is that this illness doesn’t have an effect on everybody the identical manner; it differs,” she added, stating that she has additionally found that “it impacts the endocrine system, which governs a small group of specialised cells that make up the endocrine portion of the pancreas.”
The pancreas is an organ of the digestive and endocrine techniques. The exocrine pancreas produces enzymes that help in digesting meals, primarily protein. The endocrine pancreas produces the hormone insulin that aids in controlling blood sugar ranges.
Subsequently, so as to not be depending on insulin, Walker stated she has been counting her energy, watching what she eats and making an attempt to handle herself as greatest as she will, noting that “the organs of the physique will be broken severely”, if one doesn’t train warning and intently comply with medical directions.
She warned that amputation or early demise may result “in the event you don’t handle the physique and what you set in it each day.”
Nonetheless, Walker expressed robust confidence that she’s going to overcome diabetes, putting her religion in Jesus Christ and expressing gratefulness for “His many blessings.”
