Peter Corris - Sweet & Sour: A Diabetic Life

Sweet & Sour

A Diabetic Life

Peter Corris

Copyright 2000, Peter Corris

In memory of Fred Hollows

For giving of their knowledge and providing information from my medical records, thanks to Drs Paul Beaumont, John Burgess, Warren Kidson and Gordon Ennis. Thanks also to Ruth Corris.

CONTENTS

PHOTOGRAPHS

. 1958, aged 16, shortly after I was diagnosed with diabetes.

. 1968, looking plump in Canberra.

. Roughing it at Wanderer Bay, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, 1969.

. Passport photo, 1970 this look plus needles and syringe aroused suspicion at Moscow airport.

. Boozy in Canberra, 1973.

. After a lasering session, 1977, in Sydney with my four-month-old daughter, Ruth.

. After a dressing down from Fred Hollows, running with four-minute-miler Merv Lincoln, 1980. (Courtesy Fairfax Photo Library.)

. 1998, 40 years a diabetic fit and well with Jean on Coochiemudlo Island, Queensland. (Courtesy Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd.)

Cover Photograph - Peter Corris' plaque at the Sydney Writers' Walk, Circular Quay, Sydney

INTRODUCTION

This is not a 'how to live with diabetes' book. It contains no recipes, no diets, no advice about injection equipment or technique. Excellent books on the management of diabetes are available in any good library and many public hospitals now have first-rate diabetic support services. On the Internet my usual search engine throws up 14 categories and 409 sites for 'diabetes'. A telephone call to Diabetes Australia can supply the diabetic or his or her carers with all the information needed to allow the diabetic to lead a close to normal life.

And yet all this support and information can be seen as somewhat clinical, and I'm encouraged to think that an intimate, frank account of one person's experience as a diabetic might serve some purpose.

At the time of writing I've been a diabetic for 41 years. Broadly speaking, I spent the first half of this time behaving precisely as a diabetic should not, and set myself on a course that would have led to blindness, amputation and an early death. I have spent the second half behaving as a diabetic should. This journey has provided the structure for this book a long downward swoop and an upturn just in time.

The approach is basically biographical: I've sketched the events of my life and tried to outline the part diabetes has played in shaping those events for better or worse. When I look back I see how foolish I was to neglect my diabetes as I did and how lucky I've been to escape the worst consequences of that neglect. As I examine my life now I realise that being a 'good diabetic' is not so difficult (and far easier now than when I was first diagnosed), and the reward being able to live a useful life for a normal span is beyond price.

I don't want to give the impression that diabetes has dominated my life. Modern philosophers insist on the fluidity and multiplicity of identity, and 'diabetic' is only one strand in the skein that has been my experience. I have had three professions academic, journalist and writer; I have travelled to many countries and lived in all three of the eastern Australian states; I have been twice married and a parent to three children.

So this is a very selective version that focuses on the diabetic strand rather than the others. I hope that this account of what I might call my diabetic life may help some people avoid the mistakes I made and tread a more intelligent and responsible path.

Peter Corris

PROLOGUE

'What the hell is wrong with me?'

I rush down the corridor and take the steps four at a time, risking a broken leg, to get out of the school building and into the grounds. I spring for a tap, but not just any tap. This has to be the tap hidden around the corner from the quadrangle where everyone will be milling about in the mid-morning break.

I reach the tap, turn it on hard and put my head under it. I swallow as fast as I can, gulping in the water, gasping for breath. It seems to take minutes before I can get enough water down to satisfy me. Then it's a dash for the toilet so that I can make it through the next two classes before my bladder bursts.

I hate myself. Why am I doing this? What the hell is wrong with me? This is the third day. I think it is some kind of moral weakness, like excessive masturbation. I know all about that. My mouth is dry within minutes of sitting down and thirst begins to torture me, although I must have drunk a gallon of water. I can't concentrate on the lesson. All I can think about is a running tap and how wonderful it would be to have my head under it with my mouth wide open. Now both weaknesses are clobbering me the thirst and the bursting bladder. My skin is dry; I feel as if I am burning up but I am not sweating; I feel cold if anything, and weak and shaky. Perhaps I am sick? But I am rarely sick the occasional cold or bout of flu and I've never heard of a sickness that makes you drink like a fish and piss like a fountain.

Somehow, I get through to lunchtime. Another rush to the tap, then several long, gushing pisses during the 40-minute break. I wolf down my lunch of sandwiches and fruit and buy a pie and a drink at the tuckshop. I did this yesterday, too, and it is unusual because my pocket money is minimal and has to be made to last. I don't even like pies much but I want the bulk. The sweet drink doesn't do the job. Off to the tap again, and to the toilet. The afternoon session is a misery, but I manage to achieve the most important thing concealing from my mates that anything is wrong.

The train ride from South Yarra the station nearest Melbourne Boys High School to my home station, takes about 40 minutes. Robert, one of my friends, is on the train with me. He gets off at Caulfield, four stations before mine, and I can hardly wait to see him go. I jump off the train at the next stop so I can piss and drink water, then I have to wait 20 minutes for another train. A leak at the station and a long, long drink and then the 10-minute walk home.

As I make the walk on a mild September afternoon, my schoolbag feels heavy, although there's nothing unusual in it, just the normal stuff for a night's homework and the novel I'm reading. I am an addicted novel reader, snatching pages whenever the opportunity presents, but I haven't opened the book for two days. Thirst and shame have been my companions. The bag is a dead weight and my limbs feel weak.

The dryness is on me again and I steel myself to act normally in front of my mother before I can get my mouth around a tap. Not for the first time, I notice how thin I am. I am ashamed of this, too. Ashamed of my chick-wing shoulder blades and scrawny chest. 'You're only sixteen. You'll fill out,' people have told me but it doesn't seem to be happening. Instead, I seem to be getting thinner.

As I open the gate, I think of the last two nights. They were terrible. In the small room I share with my younger brother, I had lain awake feeling my throat get drier by the second. I drank the glass of water I'd taken to bed but it didn't touch the sides. I was up and down, processing water, half a dozen times, with the house all quiet and my brother sleeping soundly. I envied him. It seemed that no sooner had I got to sleep than the pressure in my bladder would build and I'd be up again. It is a small house with only two bedrooms. My sister occupies a sleep-out in the yard, but the toilet is on the back porch and I can flush it without waking anybody, or so I think.