Waiting For the Shoe to Drop...

My father "came down with" type 1 diabetics when he was about 9 years older than I am now. It helped that he had been a 2-3 pack-a-day unfiltered cigarette smoker for about 35 years because of what that did to much of his body. So, they removed a big vein from his left leg and used that to triple bi-pass his heart in 1974. This was the leg that later "went bad" and resulted in the MDs whittling his left leg off and his right foot forward of the foot arch. He died about 5:20 PM PST on 3 February 1994 from heart failure.

My youngest brother is a type 1 Juvenile onset diabetic; he "came down with" this disease when he was about 14 years old. I don't know for sure as I was overseas in the Navy at a lovely little place in the Southeast Pacific (Guam). My brother's right leg was removed in mid-thigh in early spring 2004.

I worry about my brother quite a bit but don't want my immediate family to worry about me. So, while I've told my father-in-law, I can't bring myself to tell my brothers or my mother. I don't think my brothers will find this blog...

But, if my family does find out and I haven't told them, I recommend they try denial, thinking good thoughts about my health and just think that I couldn't be a diabetic because surely I would have told them. (This is denial on my part as my family know how secretive I tend to be...)

So, why am I sprewing this out? Because my wife is embarrassed when I do mention "my condition" and posting my remarks to a blog sounds like a private confession that few will read. sigh