Even after losing her teeth to unmonitored diabetes, Esperanza Chaidez admits that fighting against her affinity for candy and ice cream is an enduring and sometimes losing battle.
"Before I go to bed, I get tempted to have something sweet, just something small," she said.
"She doesn't follow everything perfectly, but Esperanza is one of our success stories," said Lupita Sanchez, a diabetes promotora, or community health worker, with Proyecto Juan Diego in Cameron Park. "She has made an effort to change."
Promotoras, of which there are four in Cameron Park, are everyday problem solvers, providing the intimate support for diabetes patients that doctors can't supply.
"We know that just quitting all sweets is unrealistic for everyone," Sanchez said. "We're not doctors, so we just try to do everything in our power to prevent serious complications. We try to work with people and find compromises."
There are estimated 191,000 diabetes cases in the Rio Grande Valley, according the American Diabetes Association, more than the population of Brownsville. Chaidez, along with more than 150 other Cameron Park residents, participates in the center's series of educational and exercise classes.
Since she joined six months ago, Chaidez has learned how to make tamales with vegetable oil and cactus instead of lard and pork. She's lost weight and made friends. But she's the first to admit that doesn't mean she's giving up chocolate, or that she's going to find her dancing rhythm.
"I don't like the salsa classes, but I do like the aerobics," she said. "Now I'll eat sugar-free chocolates."
Brownsville doctors also say that they must innovate to address what they call widespread apathy toward the alarming rate of diabetes in the Valley.
"So many people have diabetes in this area that patients and doctors almost take it for granted," said Dr. Willie Teo Ong, an endocrinologist at the Diabetes Control Center at Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville.
Teo Ong came to Brownsville from the Philippines as part of three-year program to work in under-served communities in the United States. Eleven years later, he's still here.
"If you like treating or studying diabetes, this is actually the place to be," he said.
Teo Ong says many of his patients risk some of the disease's more serious complications, like blindness and liver failure, by assuming that occasionally checking their blood glucose levels will suffice.
"Patients will just visit a doctor once and then buy their medication in Mexico," he said. "But a regimen is only applicable for two years at the very most. They need to continually visit doctors to make sure their treatment is still working for them."
By creating a consciousness of the disease and its dangers, Teo Ong and Sanchez hope to help more diabetics live longer and better.
"I feel better, I feel less nervous," Chaidez said. "I don't want to break the rules so much anymore." To see more of The Brownsville Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.brownsvilleherald.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Brownsville Herald, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2008 The Brownsville Herald, Texas