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Over the years, the complications from my diabetes became worse and worse, and like many diabetics in similar circumstances, I faced a very early death. I was still alive, but the quality of my life wasn't particularly good. I have what is known as Type I, or insulin-dependent, diabetes, which usually begins in childhood (it's also called juvenile-onset diabetes). Type I diabetics must take daily insulin injections just to stay alive.

Back in the 1940s, which were very much still the "dark ages" of diabetes treatment, I had to sterilize my needles and glass syringes by boiling them every day, and use a test tube to test my urine for sugar. Many of the tools the diabetic can take for granted today were scarcely dreamed of back then—there was no such thing as a rapid, finger-stick blood sugar–measuring device, nor disposable insulin syringes. Still, even today, parents of Type I diabetics have to live with the same fear my parents lived with—any morning they could try to wake up their child and discover him dead. For any parent of a Type I diabetic, this is a real and constant possibility.

Because of my chronically elevated blood sugar levels, and the inability to control them, my growth was stunted, as it is for many juvenile-onset diabetics, even to this day.

Back then, the medical community had just learned about the relationship between high blood cholesterol and vascular (blood vessel and heart) disease. It was then widely believed that the cause of high blood cholesterol was consumption of large amounts of fat. Since many diabetics, even children, have high cholesterol levels, physicians were beginning to assume that the vascular complications of diabetes—heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, et cetera—were caused by the fat that diabetics were eating. As a result, I was put on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Because carbohydrate raises blood sugar, I had to compensate with very large doses of insulin, which I injected with a 10 cc "horse" syringe. These injections were slow and painful, and eventually they destroyed all the fatty tissue under the skin of my thighs. In spite of the low-fat diet, my blood cholesterol remained very high. I developed visible signs of this state—fatty growths on my eyelids and gray deposits around the iris of each eye.

During my twenties and thirties, the prime of life for most people, many of my body's systems began to deteriorate. I had excruciatingly painful kidney stones, a stone in a salivary duct, "frozen" shoulders, a progressive deformity of my feet with impaired sensation, and more. I would point these out to my diabetologist, but I was usually told, "Don't worry, it has nothing to do with your diabetes. You're doing fine." But I wasn't doing fine. I now know that most of these problems are commonplace among those whose diabetes is poorly controlled, but then I was forced to accept my condition as "normal."

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