There was always dessert. Homemade blackberry cobbler and ice cream sundaes in summertime. Canned cherries, peaches or other fruit in heavy syrup, with cottage cheese, in the winter.
At Grandma’s we’d get fried pies, fried okra and cornbread, fried fish or roasted beef. There would be lots of watermelon and grapefruit picked that morning from Grandpa’s tree. Yum. Greens from the garden often were prepared with oil and more often than not ended up sharing the bowl with butter.
Mom tried to get us to eat healthily, but when she wedged iceberg lettuce, we’d smother it in Russian dressing. Homegrown vegetables left on our front porch by people in the church would get a good dose of salt, and gravy made everything better.
We weren’t a bunch of couch potatoes, though. TV didn’t arrive in our home until I was in junior high, and Dad severely limited how often it was turned on. We read. A lot.
I learned to catch a baseball, squatted behind home plate, thrown at a million miles an hour. Catch it or die, I’d tell myself. We played touch football, and although my feet weren’t as quick as my siblings’ on the track, I was a pretty good volleyball and softball player, not bad at dribbling a basketball and handy at field hockey. There’s something about being short that gives one a clear view between players. And someone give me a badminton racquet, please. I loved to play badminton. It’s more of a workout than you’d realize, especially when played on a hillside.
Once a bike was added to my repertoire, I became a fanatic. Eager to escape a houseful of people, craving the solitude of rural Oregon, I’d pedal my way for miles, uphill and down.
Given our diet, it’s no surprise that some of us ended up with high blood pressure and triglyceride levels that are out of this world. But why, out of the seven of us, am I the only offspring to wind up with Type 2 diabetes?
Mom and Dad began to eat more wisely when in his late 50s Dad was diagnosed with this truly insidious disease that stealthily destroys major and minor organs and paves the way for mental imparities. He would try to eat right and exercised faithfully on the racquetball court, but that man did love his ice cream, and he certainly wasn’t a fan of vegetables, fresh or cooked.
He spent his final 15 months in a home for people with dementia, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but when his life was stripped of the stress of neglected illness, caring for a home and the burdens of being part of an aging couple, he seemed to improve, mentally. Nurse’s aides kept track of his diabetes, with insulin shots when needed. He worked hard at remembering, and seemed to be training his mind to remember important things. Current things. Too many years, though, of out-of-control diabetes had done irreversible damage. He wore a catheter due to a severely enlarged prostate that should have been removed years before, and his kidneys were edging ever closer to failing. Every urinary tract infection landed him a ride to the hospital via ambulance. Those visits derailed every bit of progress he’d made, and he had about a month to climb uphill mentally before another UTI knocked him back down.
I don’t want to follow that path, and while the prostate part of Dad's illness isn't something I'll face, the diabetes damage, kidneys and all, is. I’m fighting tooth and nail to see it doesn’t happen. Join me, if you will, on this journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment