HOW much can one person realistically fit into a life? From where she sits right now ? whether behind a physician?s examination table or a teacher?s desk, before a computer or at the dinner table ? it would seem Dr. Estrellita V. Fernando-Lopez is trying her best to see just how much. And so far, she?s proving that wanting it, she can work and achieve it all in good time.

The 55-year-old endocrinologist also teaches and is mother to a brood of six ? the reason she gave up a full-time medical career for about nine years. But getting into teaching and eventually finding her way back to medical practice gave Lopez a perspective on how she could make the most impact on the lives of her patients and others like them.

Lopez is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, where she finished Medicine cum laude after obtaining a degree in Medical Technology magna cum laude in 1978.

Teaching became part of her glowing (and growing) resume only in 1996, after what she calls ?the stage of hibernation in my professional life? ? raising a family after her marriage to surgeon Dr. Fernando L. Lopez.

Returning to medical practice soon after, she found a cause and a mission.

It was during her residency at Makati Medical Center when Lopez decided to make diabetes a focus. ?People with diabetes make up the main bulk of patients we see in the clinic. And they have many problems. Endocrinologists who manage patients with diabetes can make a big difference in their patients? lives.?

Lopez warns that diabetes is fast becoming an epidemic worldwide, with the International Diabetes Federation projecting that 333 million people will be afflicted with it by 2025. Some 4 percent of Filipinos already suffer from diabetes according to a Food and Nutrition Research Institute survey five years ago. Filipinos need to know more about the disease, the survey recommended.

?This becomes more necessary because of the Filipinos? fondness for sweets and fatty foods,? Lopez says, adding that statistics indicate that one case of diabetes goes undetected for every case detected among Filipinos.

There is so much that Filipinos need to know about diabetes, among them the truth about that most common of misconceptions on how one gets diabetes from eating sweets. ?Many a patient has asked how come they developed diabetes when they are not fond of sweets. It had to be explained to them that type 2 diabetes, which makes up more than 90 percent of all cases, is hereditary, and sweets will only hasten the onset and aggravate the disease, but will not directly cause it.?

All this has led to her project of a lifetime. It took 15 months, many hours of sleepless nights, and the help of 40 doctors, but ?Diabetes is BitterSweet: A Guide to Understanding Diabetes? shows that it?s all worth it.

The book proves both informative and accessible. Lopez, the book?s editor, worked with two associate editors, Dr. Nerissa Cinco-Calimon and Dr. Florence Amorado-Santos. It was hard work but Lopez says she enjoyed doing it as well. ?The book stimulated the artist in me,? she says. ?Many of the drawings, I personally executed and adapted, with a lot of help from Photoshop and Paint!?

Response has been ?heartening and inspiring,? she says of the book that was named the Best Book in Science at the last Manila Critics Circle National Book Awards.

Lopez says books have always been a part of her life. From reading fairy tales as a child, she moved on to Jeffrey Archer novels as well as tomes by Anthony de Mello and Kahlil Gibran. A friend?s experience in self-publishing a book inspired her to do the same. ?That gave me the advantage of being in control of how I want the book to be,? she says. Thus was SweetStar Publications born.

Along the way, Lopez, who was heavily involved in parish activities, among them conducting marriage seminars, enrolled at the Loyola School of Theology at Ateneo de Manila University and finished her MA in Pastoral Ministry, major in Family Ministry and Counseling.

As president of the Philippine chapter of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, she is now preparing for their second Joint International Endocrine Congress with their mother association in the United States, to be held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in August 2010.

Lopez has apparently found another career as an author. A book compilation of articles she wrote for her parish newsletter titled ?Trifles and Profundities? is also in the works.

She?s doing another medical book ? ?again written in everyday language,? with Dr. Augusto Litonjua as co-author. The book deals with obesity and is due out later this year.

Her family has been very supportive but Lopez says she relies mainly on her deep faith to keep going. ?That I had been afforded the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of people with diabetes is an affirmation that I may be succeeding in my attempts to give back to Him even just a little of what He had given me.? ?

?Diabetes is BitterSweet? is available at National Book Store, FullyBooked, PowerBooks and other leading bookstores. For orders or inquiries, call 487-9644 or e-mail sweetstar.publications @yahoo.com.