My father has Type 1 Diabetes. He was diagnosed (rather late by most standards) at the age of nineteen. However, growing up in small town Appalachia in the 1950's, this wasn't really uncommon.
When I was very young, I remember smiling and laughing and playing with my dad just like any other little girl might, until one night when I was about five or six years old. My father was late coming home from work, which was pretty unusual for him and my mother was starting to worry about where he was........she was keeping my brother and I up with her ranting and even called my aunt to ask if he'd left work yet (my aunt worked in the same printing factory as him, you see).
When he finally arrived home, he was on foot, his face was bruised and bloody and he was completely incoherent. He came into the apartment and simply sat down in the middle of the living room floor, unresponsive and sweating profusely. My mother tried, in vain, to coax him up off the floor and he promptly took a swing at her. Of course, my mother was never one to tolerate such as that from any man, so she called the police. When they arrived, they had him transported by ambulance to a local hospital where he spent the next five days recovering from a hypo-glycemic attack (extremely low blood sugar). His car was found in a ditch two days later, about three miles away from our house. Every day, my mother would drag us to the hospital to visit him. The day before he came home, I remember my mother speaking with his doctor about his condition.
Doctor: Mrs. X, I'm sorry. There is no easy way to put this, but Mr. X has got to start taking his Diabetes seriously. At the rate he's going right now, he will die in the next five to ten years.
Mom: What do you mean he'll die in the next five to ten years? He's always taken his dibeetiss seriously. What the hell's goin on?
Doctor: Mrs. X, please calm down. I'm saying that he has to take better care of himself. Not work so much. He currently works on roofs during the day and in a printing factory at night, correct? He also needs to take his medication on time and eat three to five times a day....
Mom: Now hold on here, back up. What the f**k do you mean he's got to eat three to five times a day? *I* only eat once a day myself.
(Note the self importance!)
Doctor: Ma'am, I'm telling you that a man in his condition.....
And so on. .....
By the tender age of six I had suddenly learned that my father was going to die........and likely before I was even grown up. Now, I was a very curious child, and so, when my father came home I asked him what diabeetiss was. He explained to me that it was a disease in his body that caused it to not be able to manage the level of sugar in his blood. He said that it basically causes the body to starve. I encouraged him to eat everything in sight, naturally. He laughed. So, the next logical question from a small child would be....."Daddy are you really going to die?" He assured me that he was not. "Well, can I catch it from you?" This stopped him. He sat me on his knee and he said to me, "Listen, you know all those trips we have to make to the doctor where they keep poking your fingers and taking blood? And all those tests with the monitors that they've done and keep doing?" Who could forget! "Those tests are to find out if you have what I have. Now, you don't catch it like a cold, understand?" I did. "But, if your mom or your dad has it, then you could GET it. You could inheirit it. " Of course, he lost me. "Okay, okay. Listen, you don't have it, alright? And you probably won't have to worry about it,understand?" Of course! Daddy says its all okay and it is. That's just how it is when you're six.
By the age of fourteen, I was managing my father's doctor's appointments and his trips to the hospital. I had walked in and found him lying lifeless in the floor more times than I could count and I took a job working for a cleaning service to help cover the cost of his medications and supplies. (In those days, Diabetes was considered a pre-existing condition and the health insurance companies were free to refuse to pay for any of the costs associated with it, and they did. There were no laws to protect people who had chronic illnesses. Thankfully, this heinous wrong has since been righted. Score!) At sixteen, I learned to give my father his insulin injections and dropped out of school, in favor of working full time, and I prayed everyday that he would live to see at least one of my children born.
At fifty one, my father's health took a turn further south and he had his second heart attack. I was nineteen then. He had to have a quadruple bypass and was unable to return to work. I took a second job.
Now I'm 25 and my father has qualified for disability and the state pays for all of his medications, thank God. (The cost is roughly he same as the rent for a two bedroom house.) His health has deteriorated greatly in the last twenty years or so, (I know it sounds dramatic, but I've been mourning my father's death since I was six, and he's not even gone!) I can no longer work because he requires constant care and cannot be alone for more than an hour or two. There are times when he is so sick, I have to pick him up and carry him through the house because he can't walk. There are times when he can't feed himself. He had a toe amputated and he can no longer reach his feet to take care of them properly, so for eight months now, I've cleaned it and dressed it every day. The diabetes has affected every part of his body. His heart is weakened, his kidneys are in danger, his circulatory system has been affected and so on. It's a domino effect, the diabetes causes one part of the body to weaken and all the other systems are compromised.
Please, do everything that you can to help in the fight against this devastating disease.
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