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My mother lost her toes to neuropathy at 67. Last week my doctor told me I'm three years away from the same thing. I'm 52. I watched my mom go through it. Tingling at first. Then numbness. Then she stepped on a nail in the garden and didn't feel it for three days. By the time she noticed it was infected, the infection had reached the bone. They amputated two toes. She never walked the same again. She died at 73, mostly from depression after losing her independence. I have always been terrified this would be me. I have type 2 diabetes — diagnosed in 2019. My circulation has been going for years. The tingling started in 2022. I told myself it was just my socks being too tight. By 2024 the tingling had become full numb patches. I'd be at the supermarket and notice my left foot felt "thick." Like someone had wrapped it in cotton wool. By early 2025 the burning started. Mostly at night. Like my feet were being held over a fire. I went to my GP three times. He gave me Lyrica, then gabapentin, then upped my metformin and told me to "manage the diabetes better." The drugs took the edge off the burning. They did not stop the numbness from spreading. Last week I went for a follow-up. He looked at my feet, did the monofilament test where they touch your foot with a little wire, and I couldn't feel it on three out of ten spots on my left foot. He said the words I'd been dreading my whole adult life. "You have peripheral neuropathy. It's progressing. We need to slow it down or you're going to lose sensation completely within a few years." I drove home with my hands shaking. I'm 52. My granddaughter is 4. I want to walk her to school one day. I want to stand at her wedding. I want to die with all my toes still attached, like a normal human being. I went down the research rabbit hole that night. I needed to understand exactly what was happening to me. Here's what I found that nobody had told me. The drugs my GP gave me — gabapentin, Lyrica — they don't stop the progression. They just numb the signal so I don't feel how bad it's getting. The damage keeps advancing in silence. The actual cause isn't "the diabetes." Not directly. The cause is that diabetes destroys the small blood vessels that feed the nerves in your feet. The nerves get less and less oxygen. Eventually they stop signalling. Eventually they die. That's neuropathy. That's what amputation looks like five years before the amputation. And the only way to slow it down is to restore the blood flow. To force fresh, oxygen-rich blood back into the nerve endings before they die completely. Which means getting the small vessels to open back up and pump. Drugs don't do this. Insoles don't do this. Better socks don't do this. Lifestyle changes alone don't do this fast enough. The only thing that demonstrably reverses the trajectory is repeated, deep stimulation that forces blood back into the starved tissue. Heat to open the vessels. Compression to pump the blood through. Pulse stimulation to wake the nerves up before they're gone. 15 minutes a day, every day, for as long as you live. This is not a cure. There is no cure for what diabetes does to your feet. But it's the difference between losing your toes at 60 and keeping them at 80. I found a device that does all three things in one. R1199 on the 60% off. I would have paid R6,990 to keep my toes. Three days in I noticed warmth in my left foot for the first time in over a year. My foot had been cold even on hot days. It was warm. Two weeks in the burning at night was less. Not gone. Less. A month in I went back to my GP for the monofilament test. Out of curiosity. I felt the wire on five out of the three previously dead spots. He looked at me and said "What are you doing differently?" I told him. He didn't say anything for a long time. Then he said "Keep doing it." I will keep doing it for the rest of my life. I am not going to be my mother. I am going to walk my granddaughter to her first day of school. I am going to stand at her matric dance. I am going to have my toes when I die. If you have neuropathy, or you're prediabetic, or you're starting to feel that tingling — please read this. Link's in the comments. The earlier you start, the more you save. I wish my mother had known.