Diabetes and Me

I have been in the newspaper business for more than 40 years and have some accomplishments to show for it in the form of writing awards. But I’d say my greatest accomplishment was writing editorials for the Statesman and Herald-Bulletin (Anderson, Ind.), with complete thoughts and complete sentences.

That’s what diabetes was doing to me – even before I knew I had diabetes.

At both places in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, I remember going to work with the feeling that my head was full of cobwebs. On most days, I felt my mind was in a fog and I wondered how I would make it through the day.

My co-workers, of course, didn’t have a clue what was happening to me. I looked the same as always, my demeanor was about the same and I was continuing to crank out the editorials as usual. But the “silent killer” was doing its damage. I had the symptoms of prediabetes – losing a lot of weight without trying, an insatiable thirst for Gatorade and numbness in the feet. I ignored those symptoms, and dismissed the chronic “mind in a fog” condition to work-related stress. The condition probably had more to do with blood-sugar readings that were going through the roof.

My world changed during a cold, windy March day in 2000. My wife and I were participating in a golf event and during the course of play I developed blurred vision. By the end of the round, I couldn’t see the fairways, the greens or even the cup once I reached the green.

Ironically, I hit some of my best shots of the day during my state of blindness – with the help of my scramble partners. I felt fine, aside from the fact I could hardly see beyond my nose. The next day, I went to an eye doctor, who suspected that I had diabetes. A physician confirmed it. Life has been a roller coaster ever since.

I will discuss my complications in a later entry. But I’d like to leave this post with this message: If you should experience some of the symptoms I described, don’t ignore them. If you are overweight, or have a family history of diabetes, then you are a prime candidate for the disease.

Regular checkups are a matter of life and death.