DIABETIC TEEN

4/14/14

This seems to be a strange date to get back to telling you my story.  My goodness, I can't believe it's more than 8 months since I finished my early childhood and "Last days on a Pediatric Ward".

After writing and then reading about those early years, I believe I was a bit saddened..  That little girl, the blond with the pig tails and easy smile really did have a hard time in this grownup word of hospitals and diabetes, needles and more.   I don't think I mentioned the hiding under the bed when the interns came in to get hourly blood tests.  These blood tests were not from a finger but from the vein in that little arm.  later I referred to the interns as blood hounds.  Then there were the student nurses and the nurses who came in and helped to feed me so I would eat everything since I had "insulin on board" now.  There was only kindness and gentleness and I was blessed for that. It wasn't until I was in nursing school that I realized not everyone spends much of their life in hospitals and doctors' offices as I did and still do!

A DIABETIC  TEENAGER  can really be a big problem.  Dating, boys, hanging out, can really bring up rebellion on anyone, not just someone who is told not to smoke, drink or have too much to eat, etc.  

I seem to have 'luck,' or blessings follow me with this challenge of diabetes.  About the time I was asked by the boy across the street "to go for a soda" at the local candy store on Jamaica Avenue, DIET SODA had just become the rage  So, at 14, I had my 'first date' with Jimmy Frank  for a soda.  I had a diet root beer.  Don't remember what he had.  We walked the four blocks to the candy store, sat on stools, he ordered and paid for our sodas and then we walked home.  That's all I remember The teen years had started.


People in my neighborhood sat on their stoops (steps that led up to our house; wide enough to accommodate a few people and usually made of brick with sharp edges where you could play 'stoop ball' and try to hit a rubber ball against the step to make it go very high with someone catching it on a fly.  

I remember when my friend next door, Lillian and I were sitting on her stoop and we were looking at a paper.  She was older than I and had started volunteering, believe it or not, at Mary Immaculate Hospital as a 'candy striper'.  I read in the paper about the discovery of 'chlorpromazine' a new drug for people with mental illness.  I still wanted to be a nurse.

My brother, Bob,  went into the US Air Force, and I wrote to him often.  I remember when he went, I was 11 and it was quite traumatic.  I didn't realize how much he watched out for me until he wasn't there.  Somehow, I didn't feel as safe.  I had no reason to NOT feel safe, but that was a surprise, to feel that way.

Now, my mother was pregnant with my sister Clare.  
My brother was away in the Air force when Clare was born in March 1954.

Bob came home after his training and married Laura Thompson in May 1954  and went to Delaware , where he was stationed.  Lillian, my friend next door, was Laura's sister so she and I were both bridesmaids.  That's when Jimmy Frank across the street first noticed me.   I was in an evening gown.  No longer the just the girl who rode on the front of his bike when we went to play handball over at the old school.  That's how our first 'date' for that soda was prompted.

My teen years in hospitals weren't much different than my childhood years except I was in the adult ward.  At age 14, I suffered an intestinal problem called a Meckle's Diverticulum.    I had been walking down a flight of stairs in Jamaica High School and suddenly was in terrible pain, doubled over.  I don't remember the particulars but I do remember being in Mary Immaculate Hospital and waiting for the doctors to decide what was wrong.  It was the first time I had to be examined internally and finally my parents told me I had to have an operation.  

The surgery was performed and physicians removed (what I remember was said( an out pocketing of the small intestine).  I also remember them saying they took out a foot of the intestine as well. as the out pocketing the size of a grapefruit.  I'm not sure my memory is correct on that issue.  In those days, they sewed and  taped the incision and bandaged the entire abdomen. 

I remember  terrible pain one night, a night or two after the surgery.  In the 50's, they didn't have the sophisticated equipment they do today.   In order to keep the stomach and intestine from having anything go into it; such as  digestive juices, they used a Levine tube.  This was a tube they put into your nose and down into your stomach to keep the passages clear to heal.  Then two jars were placed (giant glass jars) next to the bed and one end of the tube went into one jar while the other with water or a liquid was slowly sloshing through.  The nurses were supposed to keep a watch that none of the fluid was bloody, green or whatever and would constitute a problem. It was also a solution to keep the patient from vomiting and breaking inner or outer stitches/incisions.   The jars were used like osmosis.  If it wasn't set up correctly, you'd be vomiting and retching.  Well, that's what was happening to me.  I couldn't stop it.  It seemed like hours that I called "Nurse" in my feeble and weak voice.  I'm sure it wasn't. hours but it was a long time.   Suddenly a nurse walked in.  She said,

"I've been listening to you for a long time. .  You poor thing!  I'm doing private duty but I think I'd better help you."  

She did.  I went to sleep finally and I NEVER forgot her.  Compassion.  I still wanted to be like that; to be a nurse.

 I remember when Dr. Mecelli came in to take the bandage off.  He took a corner of the whole abdominal bandage and just yanked it off completely!  It was such a shock, that I didn't feel pain!  Just shock!  When I looked at the very red incision with black stitches in it, it went from my waist to almost my groin.  I was awed and shocked all at once.  Needless to say, I became whole again and went home. 

Clare was in her playpen and I wasn't allowed to pick her up.  No straining or heavy exercise for 6 weeks. I was as thin as I'd ever been.   

My family moved from Bellerose, Queens, Long Island that year and Jimmy told me he would come out on the train to visit me in Levittown, Long Island.  He was a paper boy and had some extra money.  I had no romantic thoughts as I was still very young and yet already a grownup in life experience in hospitals as my peers were not.  but...I didn't know that.

Moving was awful.  I had already had one year of high school in Jamaica, Queens, New York and was riding the bus to and from school.  I had my friends, church and what felt like a place in the world.  When you are 15, most of your friends are beginning to settle into some kind of life style.  My girlfriends were starting to think about careers and so was I.  Of course I wanted to be a nurse.  Hadn't I spent most of my life in that scene, albeit on the 'other's side of it?  Interestingly, as I look back, I believe I wanted that life because 1.  I was well acquainted with hospitals, doctors, nurses.  It was a world I knew.  Also, I always felt safe being in that world because people there knew what to do if I was in trouble.  I didn't know that might be a reason then.  I do know, I was always  able to comfort other people who were in painful and scary situations because of my compassion after experiencing so much already in my young life.  

I always had a picture in my mind, of the young nursing students coming through the park in front of Mary Immaculate Hospital at 5 am every morning.  They had their white uniforms, white caps without a stripe yet and their navy blue capes and white shoes.  I would wake early and go to the window and watch them walk through the park, through the large Horse Chestnut tree shadows.  The dawn was just breaking ..I wanted to do that.  I wanted to BE that.  I feel teary at this moment remembering that longing.

Through my teen years, I didn't talk much about having diabetes.  I never felt the need because I didn't believe that was who I was.  However, as I got a little older, there was a boy I liked very much and he and I talked about everything!  Religion, likes and dislikes, marriage, children, all the grown up stuff. 

My teen years weren't too much different from my very young years.  

Being new in the neighborhood and being at a new school for my sophomore year was terribly difficult.  My sister was about two years old, my mother was going into a depression and my father had just retired from the New York City Fire Department when we moved.  The whole family was terribly anguished over issues that affected each one of us differently.  My father began to work at a school district near us as a groundsman and janitorial worker.  Mom was home alone with Clare and again, Clare tells me she remembers Mom crying frequently.  I did not know that.

None of us was doing well but none of us knew about the others. 

 And then Bob Both came into my life.  I don't remember how I met him but he made a big difference in my life.  I  had started being aware I was different than lots of other teens and schoolmates .  They began that eating, drinking and smoking stuff and I was always so disciplined regarding my body.  I was annoyed about it.  Annoyed I had to be "so good".  Goody two shoes.  A few called me that.  

One day I was meeting Bob out on the track after school.  He always liked to walk me home.  

When I met him I complained,

"I'm so tired of having to eat all the right things.  I'm tired of not being able to just eat a bag of potato chips if I want!"

He said, "Me too."  

I looked at him surprised.  

"Are you a diabetic?"

"No, I'm a long distance runner and I have to take care of my body"

He changed my life from that day on.

We were sweethearts after that, holding hands, some innocent kissing and going to the movies with other couples.  I was still naive about things and he totally knew that and was very careful with me.  I didn't realze  that at the time.



I worked at the public library during my senior year at high school.  Bob came in to say goodbye to me before he got on the bus to go to Norman, Oklahoma for naval basic training.  He decided if we wanted to consider a life together, he had to have a good job and insurance to take care of diabetic me.  

We really loved each other.  I was 17 and he was 18. I hadn't ever been out with anyone else before and I never  know about his past dating history.    I wrote to him every day and he did the same. 

There was music playing on a station the day he came to say goodbye.  It was  Della Reese.  I hear that song and my heart still has pain.  

"I see the summer roses, your favorite shade of roses , and that
  reminds me dear of you".  It was Aaugust 26th.

Next blog:  A Navy girlfriend.........