My
First Fifty Years as a Diabetic /
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By this time I was married. I had gone to college
and trained as an engineer. I had small children,
and even though I was not much more than a kid myself,
I felt like an old man. I had lost the hair on the
lower parts of my legs, a sign that I had developed
peripheral vascular disease—a complication of diabetes
that can eventually lead to amputation. During a routine
exercise stress test, I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy,
which is a replacement of muscle tissue in the heart
with fibrous (scar) tissue—a common cause of heart
failure and death among those with Type I diabetes.
Just as
the disease had taken its toll on my parents, it also
took its toll on my wife and children. Even though
I was "doing fine," I suffered a host of
other complications. My vision deteriorated; I suffered
night blindness, microaneurysms (ballooning of the
blood vessels in my eyes), macular edema (swelling
of the central portion of my retinas), and early cataracts.
Just lying in bed caused pain in my thighs, due to
a common but unpronounceable diabetic complication
called ilio-tibial band/tensor fascia lata syndrome.
Putting on a T-shirt was agonizing because of my frozen
shoulders.
I had begun
testing my urine for protein and found substantial
amounts of it, a sign, I had read, of advanced kidney
disease. In those days—the middle and late 1960s—the
life expectancy of a Type I diabetic with proteinuria
was five years. Back in engineering school, a classmate
had told me how his nondiabetic sister had died of
kidney disease. Before her death she had ballooned
with retained water, and after I discovered my own
proteinuria, I began to have nightmares of blowing
up like a balloon.
By 1967 I had these and
other diabetic complications and clearly appeared
chronically ill and prematurely aged. I had three
small children, the oldest only six years old, and
with good reason was certain I wouldn't live to see
them grown.
At my father's suggestion,
I started working out daily at a local gym. He thought
that if I were to engage in vigorous exercise, I might
feel better. Perhaps exercise would help my body help
itself. While I did feel slightly less depressed about
my condition—at least I felt I was doing something—I
couldn't build muscles or get much stronger.
After two
years of pumping iron, I remained a 115-pound weakling,
no matter how strenuously I worked out. It was at
about this time, in 1969, that my wife, a physician,
pointed out to me that I had spent much of my life
going into, experiencing, or recovering from hypoglycemia,
which is a state of excessively low blood sugar. It
was usually accompanied by fatigue and headaches.
During these episodes, I became confused and unruly
and snapped at people. The strain on my family was
clearly becoming untenable.
Suddenly, in October of
1969, my life turned around.
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