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

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.

PAGE   1  2  3  4  5