Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday: Diabetes History

Sidebar: I'm experiencing layout & formatting issues with blogger so my apologies in advance~
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 So as I was cleaning out my parents house last winter, I found a book that my mom had given me about a month after my dad died, along with a few of his things. 

It had belonged to my dad and at the time I just thought it was another book on diabetes. 
Cut to years and years later and moving and packing and all that goes with it. 
The book was put in a box with other books and I moved. 
I found the book again this summer and but it in my "Books I need to read eventually," pile. 
Then I found it again last night and I noticed a few things.

The book is called "The Diabetics Handbook & that had a familiar ring to it.
And it was given to my father in 1959 by Dr. Anthony Sindoni, JR. MD,
who was the author. 
The book was originally published in 1948 and the second edition was published in 1959.
Many top physicians of the day contributed to the book
And if you look closely, there's even the telltale sign that a PWD owned this book because 

there are rust colored blood drops on the bottom of the page.
I'm thinking my dad must have been reading this while hooked up to an IV or getting blood work done, since it was way before the advent of glucose meters. 
Some parts were marked with a pen.....
And some pages were very much dogeared.
And as continued to look through it I felt very close to my long passed Dad.  
And in the last paragraph of the Forward is a sentence that resonated for me as my father's daughter, 
as a person living with diabetes and as an epatient:

"Not only have they contributed materially to the reduction of mortality,
but they have been among the first to teach us that because the physician and the patient fight side by side, the latter must be fully instructed as to his course of action~"

It's no wonder that a Doctor specializing in diabetes was one of the first to see the importance of patients being active participants and co-pilots in their disease. 

5 comments:

StephenS said...

Kelly, I thought this was another post about something in an old book that resonates today. Well, I guess it does, but as I looked through the photos, I somehow felt closer to your Dad after seeing them, even though I obviously never knew him. In that strange, "I get it" kind of way. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Alecia said...

Beautiful Kelly. xoxo

Scott K. Johnson said...

I love that last part too. Pretty cool. Thanks for sharing!

Sara said...

Wow! That last sentence is quite powerful!

Scott E said...

Well, the title of the book is a bit dull and dated (I bet if it had a catchy title like "Diabetesaliciousness" you would've read it sooner!) but the message inside still holds true today. What a discovery! I can only imagine what it was like for you to go through it.