Guest blog from Meredith Bassler, RN

Imagine coming home at the end of the day, taking off your shoes, and finding that you had been walking with a pebble in your shoe all day long. As the pebble went unnoticed, it was allowed to wear away at the delicate skin on the bottom of your foot, creating a wound. Patients with advanced type 2-diabetes mellitus often lose feeling in their toes and feet, a condition called peripheral neuropathy. This combined with other aspects of the disease leaves these patients more susceptible to non-healing ulcers on their feet. If a patient with type 2-diabetes gets a small cut on his foot, he could not feel or notice it until the wound is already advanced and needs medical treatment. The CDC estimates that there are 1.7 million new cases of type-2 diabetes diagnosed every year; and, staggeringly, there are around 73,000 amputations…