Perry Gardner

I remember being picked up from my chair at the kitchen table and carried into the living room and laid on a red couch. I was four years old. Then my father went next door to use their phone and call somebody. The next thing I remember is waking up in a strange room where the windows were really close to the ceiling and there was a concrete wall about three feet from the window. There was a metal grate from the window to the other wall and I figured out that if the grate was removed, someone could wash the windows. I turned and looked to my right and saw three beds with old men in them. Their heads and shoulders were raised at an angle and their sheets were stretched from their feet to their shoulders so tight that if they moved any slight bit, it would be noticed. Later in life I concluded that that room was a coma ward and was in the basement of a hospital. Turning to my side I was about to go back to sleep when I heard footsteps and then a female voice said ” see, that one has moved and doesn’t belong here.” Another voice said, “you’re right, get him out of here.” The next time I awoke I was in a room where I could see the tops of trees. And that was the beginning of my life as a diabetic. The date was August 30, 1951 according to my Baby Book where my mother kept important stuff like shots and vaccines.

In those days blood sugars were measured by checking your urine. HUH? ? ? YES, CHECKING YOUR URINE. I had to urinate in a container, then put 5 drops in a test tube along with10 drops of water and Clini-test pill. There was a reaction and some heat. Then the combination would turn a color. Blue was good and orange was bad. I kept telling my parents that this doesn’t work. Then came Tes-tape, which wasn’t any better. Aahh, then came the glucose meter. As I recall this was sometime in the 80s. And just lately the CGM, and things are definitely getting better.

My parents hated to give me a shot every day, so when I was 5, they taught me how to give me my own injections. One of my old neighborhood kids reminded me that I used to charge the neighborhood kids a nickel to watch. A nickel was a lot of money back then. Another problem my parents had was counting calories because a banana was measured by size, not weight. They would ask “how big is a medium banana?” Then things changed and now we count carbs, and this works much better. Too bad restaurants don’t put the amount of carbs for a meal on their menus.

Overdosing and over lapping has always been a problem and I have woken up in the emergency room a couple of times in the past, but the CGM has really put an end to those occurrences. Also, the equipment is better. I used to use glass syringes and the same needle over and over. The needles used to get dull, and the tip would bend around and become a barb that would act like the barb on a fishhook. It hurt going in and coming out. The size has gotten much smaller a whole lot less painful. And use once and dispose. Things are getting better. As my endocrinologist said, “you came down with diabetes when those who treated it, treated it like a bunch of barbarians.”