THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE

Doctors of the 1920s and 1930s didn't know very much about diabetes. Insulin had only been discovered in 1921, and there was only one type: animal-source regular. There were all kinds of ideas about how best to treat it: How much insulin, how many injections, what to eat, how much exercise...and how long a diabetic might expect to live. Were those the "bad old days?"

Richard Donnell has had diabetes 64 years, since 1935. And it sounds like his doctors have been doing the right thing! In his own words:

"I was nine years old. I had to go to the john all the time, and I had stomach cramps. I had a sister who was in nurse training, and she said, 'You should go to the doctor!' So my folks took me to the doctor..."

"When I was 12 years old, my folks took me to a doctor, J. H. Worvel, MD, who was THE diabetic specialist in Indianapolis. He told me I had to weigh my food, count out diets, and so forth. It was very difficult to calculate a diet while going into a reaction. But anyway, I got along pretty well, except I had a lot of orange urine sugars and so forth. He sat me down and shook his finger at me; he was pretty stern: 'You have to take care of yourself!' He convinced me to watch my diet, and not to have Cokes and ice cream and things like that."

"When I was in high school, they started me on three shots a day. I had to take insulin for every meal, so I took my lunch to school and had to take my insulin. The library windows were in the back of the senior class room, and there wasn't any glass in the top of them. I had my syringe, and I had to sterilize it with alcohol. Afterwards, I would squirt the alcohol through the open windows onto the students studying in the library... That was over 50 years ago, and I am still taking three shots a day."

"High school was the most difficult time, I think. When you go to the 'sweet shop,' or something like that, what do you have? I finally learned that I could have coffee, just like the grownups did. So my buddies, when we went, would order sodas, and I would order coffee... There was no such thing as a 'diet soda,' so I just had coffee, black, like the big kids did. It was a pretty good deal, and I didn't suffer too much."

And how did Richard keep track of his sugars, in those days long before the home blood glucose monitor? When asked if he used urinalysis, the little tablet and little tube, where it changed colors, he said he used that setup in later years, but:

"Before that you put a copper sulfate tablet in, I forget how much it was. Twenty drops of water, ten drops of urine, then you put a copper sulfate tablet in. Then there was another tablet you burned, to get the blood sugar. There was also a saline solution before that, which you boiled over a test tube with so many drops of urine. It all told you the same thing."

How did it go?

"I am still here. I've got all my fingers and my toes. I need glasses, but otherwise my eyesight is good. Age? I prefer to call it maturity."

"I was an engineer. I went to Purdue, got a degree in engineering, worked for GE, worked for a private company for a while, then worked for Cummings Diesel Engine Company for 28 years, here in Columbus, Indiana. As an electrical engineer, I did a lot with diesel-powered standby generators for hospitals..."

"My wife was a nurse. I met her at the hospital, when I was going to college. I ate my meals at the hospital, and we got acquainted. It worked out pretty well. The idea was I would make the living and she would make the living worthwhile. We've been to Hawaii six or seven times, and around the world in 1989... we enjoyed it tremendously."

"Once, my wife called the police to come get me, because I was in a reaction, and she couldn't get me to eat. She was going to give me a shot of glucagon, and I thought she was going to give me a shot of insulin. I didn't need insulin! She had two policemen hold me down, and she gave me the glucagon shot. It worked..."

Asked what advice he might care to offer VOICE readers, about blood sugar, eating, exercise, and such things, he responded:

"Watching my diet and watching my blood sugars has worked pretty well for me for 64 years. It won't work for everybody, I guess. I am doing fine. I have a dog, and she takes me for a walk, about a mile and 3/10, every night. The dog is a pretty good incentive to go for a walk. And I am still here..."

Richard Donnell is indeed "still here." He is living proof that with the exercise of reasonable diabetes care, the complications, the tragedies, and the foreshortened life are not "inevitable." His is the voice of experience.