Neon Dreams

Melting masterpieces digital art

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The interior of a Eukaryotic Cell, from the outer membrane through the cytosol to the nucleus.  All molecular structures are colored by their function; the cytoskeleton is blue, membranes are green, ribosomes are purple, RNA and spliceosomes are pink, DNA and nucleosomes are yellow.  This cell is producing antibodies, all steps of the process are visualized in order from the bottom to the top of the image. 

      First DNA is transcribed to RNA, and the RNA is spliced before leaving the nucleus through a nuclear pore.  Translation begins when the RNA becomes bound to a ribosome, which converts the genetic sequence to a linear protein.  The proteins are folded and sorted inside the Golgi Complex, and then packaged into vesicles by the geodesic Clathrin Assembly.  These vesicles are pulled along microtubules by kinesin motors.  The vesicles then fuse with the outer membrane, and the antibodies are released into the bloodstream.

I don’t get what is so hard about being respectful. I don’t get why when I ask people not to make jokes out of a chronic illness that is threatening to take my life every day and costing my family over $9,000 a year, I am met with backlash. I don’t understand why it is so difficult to stop when I ask you to.

Nothing is funny about being sick. Nothing is funny about having diabetes. Nothing is funny about being eleven years old and choosing between getting over an intense fear of needles and dying. Nothing is funny about going a month undiagnosed because my doctors didn’t recognize the symptoms. Nothing is funny about throwing up on the side of the road for an hour and going to the hospital in DKA that night. Nothing is funny about having a mental breakdown my senior year of high school because I realized in the middle of English class that all of my anxiety and depression spawns from my chronic illness, and I have no one in my life to talk to about it because they don’t understand. Nothing is funny about watching everyone wonder what is wrong with you as you walk out of school uncontrollably sobbing, unable to explain to anybody who asks because it’s way too big of a pill to swallow.

Many people do not realize just how scary and awful diabetes are. Suffering from an untreated diabetic ketoacidosis ( DKA ) means that you are going to be dying a very agonising and painful death, friend.

When you have diabetes, you have too little insulin and very high blood sugar. Because sugar is corrosive to blood vessels and your blood develops a syrupy consistency, your arteries and veins start to scar. This is very bad for legs, which are the farthest from the heart and already have trouble getting blood. After a few years, nerves die from poor circulation and wounds stop healing ( this is why many diabetics have leg or toe amputations ).

Your kidneys are entirely made of blood vessels. As you can expect, too much sugar corroding and scarring those blood vessels become too damaged to filter water through. When your blood sugar is super high, your kidneys will compensate by squeezing sugar out through the blood filters and allow you to urinate them out. This, however, rips holes in your filters and is why many diabetics suffer from kidney failure and end up on dialysis.

The reason why many diabetics also suffer from strokes and heart attacks is also because the blood vessels in your heart and brain is ripped to shreds.

The real kicker however is that your now thick, dense, blood is now similar to a sponge. It sucks the water out of your tissues. When you enter a diabetic crisis, that is why you’re so thirsty. Undiagnosed diabetics can often be spotted by their inventory of couple gallon jugs of water. As soon as their blood thins out from the water from their tissues, their kidneys dump out all that water with all the sugar, which further rips them to shred. This is also why undiagnosed diabetics can be spotted by them peeing themselves in public or spend the most of their day peeing out their gallons of water.

We are not done yet though, here is a quick biology lesson about insulin: Insulin does not magically make sugar disappear. Your cells have their mouths locked shut to keep them from eating everything that passes their way, and insulin is the key that unlocks them to eat. If your body does not make insulin, your cells will starve surrounded by food. If your body is fat and all that fat is secreting endocrine to inform your body that you have enough food to last a month, your cells become insulin-resistant and it takes a lot of insulin to now unlock your cells.

Now, your cells cannot eat. Your blood is getting thicker from the onslaught of sugars, but your cells are are starving to death, being ripped apart by sludgy, razor soup, and having all of your water sucked out of them by spongey blood. Insulin also allows your cells to eat the potassium they need to keep your internal workings working, so now you have your potassium backing up, causing your blood to become acidic. In a last ditch attempt, your cells start burning protein, which is really fucking bad because it’s the cells tools and furniture. At this point, your cells are so bad that it’s like chewing on the table instead of the feast upon it in case the table is edible. You are literally starving to death.

Broken down proteins and fats produce ketone. Starving cells produce lactic acid. The combination of the two and all the extra potassium, your blood is now acidic. Before, your kidneys may have been able to compensate the sugars by secreting bicarbonate, but not anymore. That won’t be enough. The only other way your body can try to fix this ‘acid blood’ problem is by releasing a lot of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is acidic in blood. Now you’re suffocating. You’re suffocating, your body is starving, you’re dying of thirst, your blood vessels are shredded, and potassium is backed up in your in your blood so your heart’s muscle pumps are so overwhelmed that your heart just stops. And now you have died an extremely painful and preventable death.