Gosh, what GREAT posts! Very, very good stuff here.
Please allow me to add a dollar or so to my above 2 cents.
My dad died at 61 from diabetes-related renal failure, essentially. He also had gastroparesis, which is nerve damage in the digestive system. His stomach did not empty properly. He couldn't have a bowel movement without pharmaceutical or mechanical assistance. When he got relief, he would often get diarrhea and have to take immodium. This was a constant cycle the last 18 months or so of his life. In the end, it really killed him.
He had a heart attack a year before he died. No surgery required, and we thought we were out of the woods--until he had an allergic reaction to the dye used in the heart catheterization and it caused irreperable damage to his kidneys. They were already in trouble, but this completed the job. He had to go on dialysis. He was on home dialysis for a while, but had to go on the machine because the home version wasn't doing what it needed to do. He was in and out of the hospital the last nine months he lived, for various problems.
He also had a heart arrythmia. This was corrected with cardio-conversion and he was moved to ICU overnight, because that's how they handle this. While in ICU, he suffered projectile vomiting and aspirated part of it, causing chemical and then bacterial pneumonia. When he aspirated the first time, his heart stopped, but they got it restarted and put him on a ventilator, and in restraints to keep him from pulling the tube out. That was Friday night. He died the following Sunday morning when his heart just finally gave out. That was in 1995.
Daddy had been T2 diabetic since 1966. He wasn't obese, was physically active (a basketball coach), but pretty much refused to watch what he ate. Granted, the first home BG meters were not available and affordable until about 1992, but if he had taken better care of himself as far as just diet goes, he might still be living, or at least would have felt better. But he would not do it. He did indeed get by with it for the better part of 20 years. But then the diabetic retinopathy set in, then the circulatory problems. It's the same old story, and nothing we could say, nothing my mother or his doctors could say, would convince him he needed to do better.
For some reason, one of the nurses made a picture of him at the dialysis clinic. If you compared it with a school picture made just 10 years earlier, you would wonder if it was the same person. In the '85 photo, he had a sort of sneaky half-smile (didn't like having his pic made), he was a healthy weight, with salt and pepper hair and a glint of humor in his eyes. In the '95 photo? He was skin and bones, his skin color was awful, he had the most pathetic look of defeat in his eyes. I choke up just thinking about it.
That's the photo that keeps me in the fight, though. That's why I do this every day. I don't want to end up like that, true, but more, I want to honor what he suffered by being healthy and being a credit to him, as well as to myself. My Daddy was a wonderful, wise, and Godly man. He was a beloved teacher and coach. I am profoundly thankful to be his daughter.
At the same time, I shake my head because it didn't have to end like it did. It doesn't have to end like that for you, or for anyone else, either.
Please, for everyone you love, for everyone who loves you, and for yourself, change the ending of this story.
And we still care about what happens to you.
