In Which I Review the Story of a Longtime Diabetes Warrior

Disclaimer: I paid for this book with my own funds and have not been reimbursed in any fashion for this review. All opinions are my own.

There are a lot of great books out there about diabetes management. I've reviewed several of them this month. I've also reviewed one book about diabetes parenting and have another in the "to be reviewed" pile. Today's book falls into a third category: It's a memoir of life with diabetes written by a long time diabetes warrior.

Richard Vaughn published Beating the Odds: 64 Years of Diabetes Health in 2009. As of this writing Richard is still alive and has been living with diabetes for 74 years. When he was diagnosed at age 6 in 1945, it was common for diabetes to drastically shorten a person's lifespan. A newly diagnosed 10 year old in 1945 might be expected to live to 45 at the oldest. As his book's title suggests, Richard has beaten the odds.

Richard begins his story with his early childhood. Several years of poor health, beginning with three different types of measles at the age of 2, culminated in his diagnoses with type 1 diabetes (then known as juvenile diabetes). Because doctors knew very little about diabetes at that time, Richard's parents took him to 4 doctors before they got a diagnosis. One doctor prescribed a "tonic" (which was most likely sugar water) to improve appetite. Even the "diabetes expert" who finally gave the diagnosis could do nothing more than prescribe insulin and tell them to avoid giving their son sugar or food that contained a lot of sugar.

Reading about Richard's early life with diabetes made me feel very grateful that my daughter was diagnosed at six in 2017 and not in 1945. There is so much more knowledge about diabetes and so many better options for diabetes management now. Kittygirl is able to do everything her non-diabetic peers do, including playing sports and playing hard at recess. No one at Richard's school was trained to treat low blood sugar, which was an even more serious risk for people with diabetes in the 1940's than it is today because of the way the insulin formulations of the time worked. Richard was not allowed to participate in gym class or to play with his classmates at recess for fear that his blood sugar would go low, resulting in a seizure.

This gem of a book takes us through Richard's life, from a young child with diabetes to an adult who went to college and graduate school and enjoyed a long, successful career as a college math and statistics instructor. Coming from rural Virginia, it would have been an accomplishment for anyone of Richard's generation to finish college, let alone someone with a challenging chronic health condition.

Richard married and has two grown sons and several grandchildren. As diabetes technology has advanced, he has kept up with it and has used the advances to improve his diabetes management. When A1C tests first became available his A1Cs were very high, but he learned all he could about managing his diabetes better and began to work to lower his average blood sugar.

In addition to having written the book, Richard has been an active member of the diabetes online community (DOC) since 2006. In fact, it was members of the DOC who encouraged him to write a book expanding on blog posts he had written about his early life with diabetes

Richard is very active in a variety of diabetes Facebook groups, and regularly share stories from his life to encourage the parents of children with diabetes. His life reminds us that, if he could live a long, happy, and relatively healthy life with diabetes despite all the odds stacked against him, the chances are even better for our children.

Whether you have diabetes, your child has diabetes, or you're simply interested in a a fascinating personal narrative about how the treatment of the disease has changed since the mid 20th century, I highly recommend this book.