An interesting email from Tigo

one last thing, you decide if you answer or not, do you regret being married to a diabetic, or do you wish you have listened to your dad, I recall you saying your kids didn't get it, if I knew my kids weren't getting it I would not think about it twice, you have no idea how lucky you are having healthy kids, that's my lifelong dream. Plz answer back, your blog has helped me, he is type one, his dad got it when he was four and my bf at 19, somewhere I read chances of inheritance increase when they were diagnosed before age 11...I dunno..I guess I have a lot of thinking to do.


Dear Tigo,


I think I need to get a few things corrected.  This is both our second marriage.  We each have 2 children from a prior marriage, none of our own.  My oldest son had asthma so severe that his doctors said he would be dead before he was 12.  He's still here.  My youngest son developed grand mal seizures from DPT shots and he still has them even though he has been on heavy medication since birth.  So, I did not have healthy children, but their issues are not related to diabetes.


My husbands daughter has pre-diabetic symptoms including having kidney stones removed surgically almost bi-monthly. She needs to get off dairy and refuses to do so.  His son (both kids are adults) lives an extremely healthy lifestyle as he knows he has a good chance of inheriting this disease as his father, grandfather, great and great-great grandfather all have/had diabetes.


In general, I never listened to my own dad about anything until I was in my mid 30s.  But my family does not have a close history of diabetes.  My dad's dad had siblings who had diabetes, but my grandpa never had it and lived to age 83.


So, do I regret being married to a diabetic?  I think my answer would be yes if we had had children together.  Why?  Well, it's a long story, but the short version is that he was not educated in diabetes when his children were growing up and no one ever explained to them that his outbursts were sugar lows.  Today, his adult children will tell you that their father was a very abusive man.  They remember him in a rage all the time.  And they think it was his personality.  I have been trying to re-educate them that it was probably his diabetic lows....but they have a hard time transitioning their thoughts after all these years of growing up with a dad who yelled and screamed at them all the time.  His wife left while he was on a business trip and he came home to an open front door and a house with nothing inside of it.  I now know why she did that.  If she had tried to leave while he was home, he would have gone into what I term a "diabetic rage" and he would have threatened her.  He did that to me more than once before I was educated about diabetes.  He used to tell people that she left him because she was a lesbian (she had moved in with a girlfriend until she could find a place of her own and has since remarried a nice guy.)  Now, if he even starts in on that line of talk, I immediately correct him by stating that she left you because you did not control your diabetes.....and he usually changes the conversation.  I do not allow him any excuses with what he did to his past life.


I love him dearly.  I do not regret marrying him.  I regret that I did not know anything about diabetes before I married him.  And I cannot honestly say that if I had been educated, if it would have changed my mind.  I am very grateful that we did not have children together because I can see how it has impacted his children.  Imagine your daughter needing to have kidney stones removed every other month (horrible pain until they are removed).  She has also had to have both ovaries removed due to a pre-diabetic condition called PCOS polycystic ovary syndrome.  She will never have her own children and is also being treated for depression.  How devastating that must be to her own mom.  According to her physician, PCOS is pre-diabetic.


hope that helps a little


DW