The Weekly Diabetic Foot Check Families Can Do at Home.

Diabetic foot ulcers rarely announce themselves, because neuropathy silences the pain that would normally raise the alarm. The counter-move is boring and powerful: a regular look at both feet, top, bottom, and between the toes, by someone who will actually do it every week.

Any break in the skin, blister, or crack, especially on pressure points and between toes. Redness or warmth in one spot. Swelling in one foot and not the other. Calluses that are dark underneath, blood under a callus is a wound in progress. Toenails digging into skin. Drainage or spots on socks, which is often how families discover an ulcer nobody felt. A mirror on the floor works when bending is hard; a phone photo works even better, because it creates a record.

Anything open, anything draining, anything discolored, or anything that wasn't there last week. With diabetes, a foot finding is never a wait-and-see. We treat diabetic foot ulcers inside a limb preservation frame, and the same visit can manage the diabetes itself. Published research puts five-year mortality after a diabetic foot ulcer near that of cancer overall (Armstrong et al., Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, 2020), which is exactly why the weekly check earns its five minutes.