American Diabetes Association: For all the ones I love.

For all the ones I love.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
By: Francine Baker-Holt

I've lost too many people to this disease. I don't want it to be the cause of losing any more.

Typical of all experimental teens and young adults my Uncle Mark tried alcohol when he was young and was a social drinker with his friends throughout his youth. Unlike most other young adults, my uncle had diabetes and as some of you must know, drinking really messes with your sugar. Mark wanted to be like other people so badly that he paid no attention to what this abuse was doing to his body and being a "social drinker" finally caught up with him. Newly married, he first went blind, then the other complications set in. What would result in a slight headache for me the next day, caused his body to rebel against him and ultimately his death.
My Grandfather managed to control his sugar a little better than his son. At the time of his death he had prosthetics on both of his legs and a finger missing from one of his hands where he had got infections that wouldn't heal and needed the offended appendages to be removed.
Others in my family and many of my friends have been diagnosed with diabetes. These are the reasons that I walk: I want a cure to be found so that the activities that we take for granted as a right of passage in our youth won't kill us. I want the ones I love to live to be a ripe old age and never have to face the challenge of learning to walk or eat with the use of an artificial aid. In short, I walk for a cure.