An Inspiring Example

An Inspiring Example

AN INSPIRING EXAMPLE

Evelyn Engelhardt doesn't want young diabetics to be depressed.
Too many, she thinks, dwell on thoughts of going blind, losing kidneys, or facing
amputation. "Why think that way?" she asks. She knows the vast majority
of diabetics who take care of themselves will not face complications.
She ought to know. She's had diabetes 68 years.
When Evelyn was ten years old, in September 1931, she began
to show the classic symptoms of diabetes: the thirst, the weight loss... She
dropped to 86 pounds, and her parents thought she had a tapeworm.
Her old family doctor figured it out. He checked her urine,
and said "she had sugar." But he hadn't heard of insulin (it had been
out ten years), so he put her on "a real strict diet of gluten bread."
It didn't help. About a year later, in 1932, she went into a
"diabetic coma," from the untreated high blood sugars. She could have
died. Her mother told her they used to call it "consumption."
But her aunt knew a doctor at Good Samaritan Hospital, there
in Cincinnati, who "knew something about diabetes." Into hospital
Evelyn went.
They kept her there a month. "I got to know the nurses
really well," she says.
Evelyn didn't think what she had was all that bad, but her mother
did--and kept her out of school for the next year. During that year, her mother
made sure that Evelyn took her three shots of regular insulin (the only kind
they had) on time, every day. Evelyn also learned to weigh her food, and to
test her urine for sugar, using a test tube and Bunsen burner.
Not surprisingly (considering the big "reusable" syringe
needles of the day), she did not enjoy injecting her insulin. A local pharmacist
found her an automatic injection device: "This was a thing you put the
syringe in, like a barrel, and it pulls back--sort of like the lancet devices
we have now. Then it would automatically go into your arm, and you would get
your insulin. It was really fantastic..."
Evelyn notes that once her diabetes was under control, her personality
changed. She became president of her high school freshman class. "I was
outgoing; I was in all the best groups, you know!"
But, inevitably, there were insulin reactions...
"I went to Our Lady of Mercy High School, and I belonged
to one of the 'cliques' as they called them. There were 13 of us then, and now
only four are left--but we still keep in touch. But anyway, this one girl friend
of mine used to say: 'I remember when we went down to Chester park, walked,
and went swimming. You acted so funny...' My friend remembered she had a Clark
Bar, and once she gave it to me I was OK...
"And there were times when I was dating. I danced a lot,
the jitterbug. I would get home late, and there would be times they couldn't
wake me up. And so my dad was the only one who could take care of that. I would
wake up and have Hershey chocolate smeared all over my face--he was trying to
get it into my mouth, you know--and I'd fight it like crazy... Any time that
happened, my mother wouldn't do it; my dad would always take care of it."
Those were the early days; folks didn't know anything like what
we do now about taking care of diabetes. Still, Evelyn kept up her diet, her
exercise (she loved dancing!) and she prospered. As self-care improved, she
adopted the new techniques, like regular blood glucose monitoring.
Evelyn and husband Robby have been married for 54 years, and
they have two daughters, now 48 and 44 years old. They have four healthy grandchildren.
"It's not the easiest thing in the world to have children when you're diabetic,
but it's certainly worth everything I went through."
There are many veteran diabetics like Evelyn Engelhardt, and
if you ask them how they made it 50, 60, or more years without significant complications,
they all seem to say the same thing. Evelyn quotes her daughter, who owns a
restaurant: "Mom, you really do take care of yourself. I wish you'd see
the people who come to this restaurant, who are diabetic, and think nothing
of ordering pie, cake, you know..."
But she never slipped up, and she's gone the distance: 68 years
with type 1 diabetes. Evelyn Engelhardt is living proof that with diligence,
diabetes can be conquered. She is an inspiring example to us all.
She would like to correspond with others interested in diabetes.
Write to her: Evelyn Engelhardt, 10602 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45231.