COEUR d'ALENE - Shari Williams knows all about the dedication it takes to control diabetes.

The 62-year-old Coeur d'Alene woman was diagnosed 16 years ago with Type 2 of the lifelong disease in which there are high levels of sugar in the blood.

It's been an up-and-down battle since.

"It doesn't go away just because you refuse to think about it," Williams said. "It'll just keep getting worse."

November is American Diabetes Month and a free awareness and prevention event will be held on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Panhandle Health District in Hayden.

"It's usually caused by being overweight, over 40 or a family history of it," Williams said. "I hit the jackpot on that one."

Williams controls her diabetes with diet, exercise, insulin and medication, but it's not easy.

"It's hard to do if you have any kind of life," she said. "If I don't exercise and eat right, I feel like a couch potato. Now I'm watching my blood-sugar more closely than ever. If I don't, I'll have mental confusion, tiredness, crabbiness and feel really uncomfortable.

"You don't make good choices when your blood-sugar is low."

Williams said she has had three wakeup calls during her roller coaster ride with diabetes - when she was diagnosed, lost three teeth and when it felt like she was reading through waxed paper.

"Being a dental hygienist, losing three teeth was adding insult to injury," she said.

The effects Williams experienced with her eyes and mouth were the result of her diabetes, Williams said.

"It can even manifest itself into a stroke," she said.

Those jolts have made Williams hit her exercise machine more often, turn to chicken and fish rather than red meat and stay away from fast food as much as possible.

An estimated 25 million people in the United States have Type 2 diabetes, which results from cells not using insulin properly, according to the Center for Disease Control. Another million have Type 1, formerly called juvenile diabetes and results from destruction of insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.

Both types 1 and 2 can't be cured, only controlled.

In the five counties of North Idaho, 7.3 percent of the adults have diabetes, according to the CDC.

Thirty-five percent of people 20 and older in the United States - and 50 percent of the adults 65 and older - have prediabetes.

"We all need to live preventative lives, especially those with prediabetes or at risk for diabetes," said Whitney Fehringer, health education specialist at the Panhandle Health District. "It is also vital to help our children and youth to create lifestyle habits that will not put them at risk of developing diabetes."

Diabetes event Saturday

The North Idaho Diabetes Coalition will hold a free prevention and awareness event called Diabetes and You on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Panhandle Health District, 8500 N. Atlas Road, Hayden, for American Diabetes Month.

There will be vendors, speakers, cooking demonstrations, foot and blood pressure checks, door prizes, recipes, food samples and free glucose meters. Those interested in pre-diabetic testing should bring their insurance card as there's no out-of-pocket cost. Information: 415-5140