Jan 10
12
Hillbillies Lose Their Daughter To Type 2 Diabetes!
There’s only one thing worse for a parent than to watch the child they nurtured fade away in a cold hospital bed. And that “worse thing” is to know that they could have done more than they did. This is a story presented to me recently:
“Peggy-Sue was a damn fine girl and made a great wife and mother while she was alive. Bright as a button too – she was forever carrying on about wanting to be a teacher and Mom and I found the money somewhere to get her through college when she was of age.
The troubles started when our little girl was just twelve years old and began taking on weight. Some folk did tell us to get her to a doctor, but we’re high up in the Colorado Mountains where such things don’t exist … that’s except for the city slickers down in the valley who are just after a man’s money. As the years rolled on we kind of got used to her being overweight, and stopped nagging when she achieved her majority.
After that, life pretty much rolled on until her husband Jake came round to us in the middle of the night to tell us she was in pain. I could see there was a problem as soon as Mom and I got there. She was sweating like she was in a fever and her hands and feet was all swelled up and full of sores. I couldn’t rightly hear what she was saying but I already knew enough to load her up into the back of the pick-up and get her to the hospital down in the valley real fast.
The one thing I really hate about medical people is that they never tell you the whole truth. I swear I spent a whole week down there with Mom and Peggy-Sue. They all said we’d come to them too late, that we should have done something about our little girl’s weight when the problem started. There was no way we could find money for a kidney transplant even if we sold the house, the furniture and the pick-up truck, so in the end we just loaded her up again and took her home to die.
These days I only want to know two things. Why were Mom and I such fools as to close our eyes to what they told us at the school when she was still our little angel. And how the heck I’m going to live the rest of my life with just a lonely grave out back that I can’t even pick up and hold in my arms.”
Childhood type 2 diabetes, the deepest cut of all …
