My
First Fifty Years as a Diabetic /
Read It Online!
PAGE
1
2 3
4 5
 Get
Entire
Chapter
(37K)
Tip:
To save without viewing, right-click and choose
Save Target As from pop-up menu |
There are a number
of myths surrounding diet and diabetes, and much of
what is still considered sensible nutritional advice
for diabetics can over the long run be fatal. I know,
because it almost killed me. I developed diabetes
in 1946 at the age of twelve, and for more than two
decades I was an "ordinary" diabetic, dutifully
following doctor's orders and leading the most normal
life I could, given the limitations of my disease.
Over the
years, the complications from my diabetes became worse
and worse, and like many diabetics in similar circumstances,
I faced a very early death. I was still alive, but
the quality of my life wasn't particularly good. I
have what is known as Type I, or insulin-dependent,
diabetes, which usually begins in childhood (it's
also called juvenile-onset diabetes). Type I diabetics
must take daily insulin injections just to stay alive.
Back in the 1940s, which
were very much still the "dark ages" of
diabetes treatment, I had to sterilize my needles
and glass syringes by boiling them every day, and
use a test tube to test my urine for sugar. Many of
the tools the diabetic can take for granted today
were scarcely dreamed of back then—there was no such
thing as a rapid, finger-stick blood sugar–measuring
device, nor disposable insulin syringes. Still, even
today, parents of Type I diabetics have to live with
the same fear my parents lived with—any morning they
could try to wake up their child and discover him
dead. For any parent of a Type I diabetic, this is
a real and constant possibility.
Because of my chronically
elevated blood sugar levels, and the inability to
control them, my growth was stunted, as it is for
many juvenile-onset diabetics, even to this day.
Back then,
the medical community had just learned about the relationship
between high blood cholesterol and vascular (blood
vessel and heart) disease. It was then widely believed
that the cause of high blood cholesterol was consumption
of large amounts of fat. Since many diabetics, even
children, have high cholesterol levels, physicians
were beginning to assume that the vascular complications
of diabetes—heart disease, kidney failure, blindness,
et cetera—were caused by the fat that diabetics were
eating. As a result, I was put on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate
diet. Because carbohydrate raises blood sugar, I had
to compensate with very large doses of insulin, which
I injected with a 10 cc "horse" syringe.
These injections were slow and painful, and eventually
they destroyed all the fatty tissue under the skin
of my thighs. In spite of the low-fat diet, my blood
cholesterol remained very high. I developed visible
signs of this state—fatty growths on my eyelids and
gray deposits around the iris of each eye.
During
my twenties and thirties, the prime of life for most
people, many of my body's systems began to deteriorate.
I had excruciatingly painful kidney stones, a stone
in a salivary duct, "frozen" shoulders,
a progressive deformity of my feet with impaired sensation,
and more. I would point these out to my diabetologist,
but I was usually told, "Don't worry, it has
nothing to do with your diabetes. You're doing fine."
But I wasn't doing fine. I now know that most of these
problems are commonplace among those whose diabetes
is poorly controlled, but then I was forced to accept
my condition as "normal."
PAGE
1
2 3
4 5
