Expanding My Story, Part 1
My story “62 Years Of Type 1 Diabetes” appears here in the Type 1 forum and is also listed on the main page… Many friends have asked me to try and get my story published so it can be sold in book stores. I was not interested in doing this until I saw how many views have been made on the seven sites where the story has been posted. On one site there are over 5,000 views. People on several sites have told me that my diabetes history, my early years, is too brief and I should go into more detail. On this site the story is being translated into Spanish. There have been other suggestions for expanding my story. I have to expand because my current story is not long enough for a book that might be published at a later time, maybe next year, if I can find a willing publisher. I intend to start my expansion with this thread today. It will be an ongoing thing and will take me many months because I have many other things to tend to until this winter. I will prepare a list of “odds and ends” starting today. Some of those tidbits will be worked into already existing chapters at a later time. There will probably be new chapters as well.
In the summer of 2008 I was notified by a diabetic friend that the ADA (American Diabetes Association) was looking for diabetics who had had diabetes for more than sixty years. 2008 is the 60’th anniversary of the “Diabetes Forecast” monthly magazine published by the ADA. I joined the ADA site and posted in their support group. I was contacted by one of the people from the magazine. They were interested since I had written my story online and also because I have very good health after 62 years of diabetes. On August 1 a professional photographer arrived at my home. His name was John, a young personable fellow. John spent about two hours and snapped many, many pictures. When he arrived I was wearing walking shorts and short sleeves. John said that I would have to change into different clothes since the anniversary edition would be published in October. My wardrobe was not very Octoberish. He wanted me to dress in long pants and long sleeves and he wanted me to do some work in my “workshop”. An ADA staff member had read that I had done a lot of carpentry work in my house through the years so they thought it would be neat if they photographed me working with my carpentry tools in my workshop. I explained that my garage is my “workshop” and I use very simple tools. John was not discouraged. I put on some old clothes speckeled with paint and John thought that was perfect. He put some bright colored paint cans behind me on a shelf and I started sawing away on a piece of trim in my miter box. About twenty pictures later I picked my Dremel tool and held it to the trim for the next sequence of pictures. It was a hot sultry day and I was sweating big time but John was happy and I looked very Octoberish. We then went to the back yard for the last set. There are very pretty flowers and gardens that my wife has carefully prepared through the years in our back yard but John said that did not look appropriate for October. I was allowed to put my shorts and short sleeved shirt back on but John was down on the ground shooting from an angle that would not show my bare legs. The side of the house and an evergreen were in the background so the summer scenery would not appear in the pictures. The Octoberish thing was beginning to get to me. John wanted me to smile in every shot so I continued to grin and I hoped I would look happy in the pictures he took. Actually we enjoyed John’s visit. He was a very nice fellow. After John left I went back into my house poured a glass of iced lemonade, turned on a fan and relaxed in my easy chair. The following week I was notified by the photography department of the magazine that the pictures had turned out great and they wanted me to send them some childhood pictures. I sent a few including one that was taken during the year I was diagnosed in 1945. It is interesting to note that they will probably use only one of the dozens of pictures that John took but I was told that that is typical in a situation like this.