presents itself more often in adulthood (although more children are being affected as the epidemic grows), and involves an inability of the pancreas to produce sufficient insulin or an inability of the body to use the insulin well. Finally, gestational diabetes occurs during pregnancy and is considered temporary.
The consequences of diabetes can be lethal. Excessively high levels of blood glucose eat away at our nerve endings, attacking the organs and the bodyâs extremities. This can lead to blindness and foot and leg amputations. It can also lead to kidney failure and death. Some people call the disease âthe silent killer,â because diabetics do not generally experience significant pain or discomfort in the early phases of the disease. Itâs a misnomer, however, because if it proceeds untreated or is poorly managed, the body will break down in the most excruciating ways, requiring operations, amputations, and dialysis.
I watched my father, Daniel G. Hill III , fall apart limb by limb. He had a wonderful, active, public life through most of his career as a sociologist, human rights activist, and writer about black history in Canada. His last years on the job were tough, but he made it through his final working stint as ombudsman for the province of Ontario. It was a five-year posting. I attended his swearingÂ-in party, in 1984, and I remember driving him to the Ontario Legislature for it. He was still well enough to travel with my mother, go to work, and do battle on behalf of those who felt they had been treated badly by the Ontario government.
But he had good days and bad days, back then, and the day of his swearing-in was one of the bad ones. He was surely excited, and proud, and perhaps a tad anxious, going to the party. He called it glad-handing, when he went to social events and had to chat with a hundred well-wishers. He was the first black man to become the ombudsman of Ontario, and years earlier he had become the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and he was surely conscious of the social weight on his shoulders. He knew he had better not screw up on the job, do something stupid, or cause some scandal, because if he did the whole world would be looking to point fingers. To the best of my knowledge, he never screwed up on any job â certainly never enough to draw public opprobrium, or to jeopardize his own position.
I could see that he was worked up, in the passenger seat of the sedan that I drove to get him to the Legislature, but I was not prepared for what I saw. He became confused, irrational, demanding things that made no sense, and he appeared to be physically trembling. It upset me to see my father so out of it, on a day that he was expected to be in command of his faculties and to excite his well-wishers about the job that was ahead of him. He had invited many of our neighbours to the reception, and I recall that he was especially tickled and proud about that. With all the responsibilities that were about to fall on his shoulders as the person appointed to probe into accusations of wrongdoing by the very government that employed him, the thing my father obsessed about in the car was the neighbours: who was coming, if they had received their invitations, how they would react. This fussing on his part told me that something was wrong.
He got out of the car and started wandering off toward an employee of the Legislature who stood at the door, barking some sort of insane order. We got him inside and into a quiet room, and figured out that his blood sugars were probably low, and gave him a glass of apple juice. Fifteen minutes later, he was back to normal.
The irritability, irrationality, the trembling â all of this resulted from the amount of sugar in his blood. In the language of diabetics and their families, he was âhaving a low.â Glucometers â pocket-sized devices that measure blood sugar â were bigger, more cumbersome, and slower in the
The consequences of diabetes can be lethal. Excessively high levels of blood glucose eat away at our nerve endings, attacking the organs and the bodyâs extremities. This can lead to blindness and foot and leg amputations. It can also lead to kidney failure and death. Some people call the disease âthe silent killer,â because diabetics do not generally experience significant pain or discomfort in the early phases of the disease. Itâs a misnomer, however, because if it proceeds untreated or is poorly managed, the body will break down in the most excruciating ways, requiring operations, amputations, and dialysis.
I watched my father, Daniel G. Hill III , fall apart limb by limb. He had a wonderful, active, public life through most of his career as a sociologist, human rights activist, and writer about black history in Canada. His last years on the job were tough, but he made it through his final working stint as ombudsman for the province of Ontario. It was a five-year posting. I attended his swearingÂ-in party, in 1984, and I remember driving him to the Ontario Legislature for it. He was still well enough to travel with my mother, go to work, and do battle on behalf of those who felt they had been treated badly by the Ontario government.
But he had good days and bad days, back then, and the day of his swearing-in was one of the bad ones. He was surely excited, and proud, and perhaps a tad anxious, going to the party. He called it glad-handing, when he went to social events and had to chat with a hundred well-wishers. He was the first black man to become the ombudsman of Ontario, and years earlier he had become the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and he was surely conscious of the social weight on his shoulders. He knew he had better not screw up on the job, do something stupid, or cause some scandal, because if he did the whole world would be looking to point fingers. To the best of my knowledge, he never screwed up on any job â certainly never enough to draw public opprobrium, or to jeopardize his own position.
I could see that he was worked up, in the passenger seat of the sedan that I drove to get him to the Legislature, but I was not prepared for what I saw. He became confused, irrational, demanding things that made no sense, and he appeared to be physically trembling. It upset me to see my father so out of it, on a day that he was expected to be in command of his faculties and to excite his well-wishers about the job that was ahead of him. He had invited many of our neighbours to the reception, and I recall that he was especially tickled and proud about that. With all the responsibilities that were about to fall on his shoulders as the person appointed to probe into accusations of wrongdoing by the very government that employed him, the thing my father obsessed about in the car was the neighbours: who was coming, if they had received their invitations, how they would react. This fussing on his part told me that something was wrong.
He got out of the car and started wandering off toward an employee of the Legislature who stood at the door, barking some sort of insane order. We got him inside and into a quiet room, and figured out that his blood sugars were probably low, and gave him a glass of apple juice. Fifteen minutes later, he was back to normal.
The irritability, irrationality, the trembling â all of this resulted from the amount of sugar in his blood. In the language of diabetics and their families, he was âhaving a low.â Glucometers â pocket-sized devices that measure blood sugar â were bigger, more cumbersome, and slower in the
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