Hello peoples, I’m back! Now, this is actually an essay I wrote for English, but it’s the best essay I’ve ever written(not very good at them) so I wanted to share it with you(readers: NOOOOO!) anywho, we read the novel The Perfect Storm in English, and the teacher wanted us to write an essay about something that happened in our lives that we could consider our “perfect storm”. Well, my life isn’t interesting enough for me to have a perfect storm, but my Uncle had the misfortune of having a perfectly bad storm. So read on, and see the awful predicament that is a Diabetic’s life. The sad thing is my cousin and sister are also diabetic. The brightish side is that it won’t necessarily be this bad for them. But let this serve as a reminder to any diabetics out there that this is what happens when you don’t do all your insulin measurements and stuff like that properly.

Uncle Norman’s Perfect Storm

By

Caitlin

In the non-fictional novel The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, the author describes a horrifying storm which destroys a fishing boat and its crew. In my life there was never a situation that I could consider my perfect storm, but in my Uncle Norman’s life he went through a situation that could be considered his perfect storm.

When Uncle Norman was twelve years old he caught the flu, which triggered Type One diabetes, and one week later he fell into a Diabetic coma. At the age of twenty he started laser surgery for bleeds his eyes, and still goes for laser surgery on his eyes. He broke his foot when he was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and it took three and a half years to heal because the nutrient vessels in his feet all died. He faced an amputation on his lower leg if his foot didn’t heal.

When he was thirty years old Uncle Norman started passing out because he cannot feel low blood sugars, and at approximately thirty-eight he started getting flu like symptoms that were diagnosed and treated as the flu. When he was forty years old Uncle Norman began to throw up everyday, and everyone thought it was stress. Then one week before Thanksgiving 2004 he went to a clinic, where the doctor told him his symptoms, “you are vomiting constantly, you are always nauseous, and your blood sugars are out of control.” Uncle Norman said that that was correct, and the doctor told him to go to the hospital because his kidneys were failing, and that the doctor would call ahead.

Uncle Norman was admitted to Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver and assessed. He was then transferred to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver in acute kidney failure, where he spent two weeks being assessed, and a Dialysis program set up. He was having problems with his blood pressure going too low, so the doctor suggested he not take his blood pressure medication before Dialysis on the Friday session. He started feeling unwell about two hours into the session, and became disoriented. The nurse stopped the session early and took him down to emergency, where he stayed overnight and had five strokes. The next morning he was admitted to the Neurology Ward in a coma, and he remained in a coma for five days. He started to coming out of his coma Wednesday in the PM hours, but was very disoriented and did not recognize anyone, not even his family. By Saturday he was doing much better, and knew who everyone was. The doctor told us that it would be better if we went out to Vancouver in the spring when the weather was better, because Uncle Norman was going to survive. He was very ill with one of the two new super viruses, which he caught in emergency. Uncle Norman continues Dialysis four times a week, six hours each at St. Paul’s Hospital. The strokes the Uncle Norman suffered caused significant brain damage and he is currently relearning to read. He doesn’t remember his childhood and cannot be retrained until he can retain information. They put a shunt in his arm to replace the one in his jugular vein but were unsuccessful. They finally succeeded on the fourth attempt and a total of eleven months later. When they removed the jugular shunt the site became infected and he had to go on antibiotics for three weeks. It became infected again four days later and he had to go back on the antibiotic for six more weeks. There is only one antibiotic for this infection and it causes vomiting and diarrhoea, and it is very hard on a diabetic.

Uncle Norman is a licensed mechanic but cannot work in that field because it is too dirty. He is hoping to overcome or relearn to read and be able to retain information so he can train to be a dialysis technician. We went out to Vancouver in the summer, and Uncle Norman took us out on a boat trip. It took him a week to recover from that exertion. He has to maintain his weight because that is how they measure how much liquid to take off. He has to watch how much fluid he drinks, and he cannot have pop because of all the sodium. He also has nephropathy -nerve damage- so he cannot feel low blood sugars until he is almost passed out. He passes out because lows quite intermittently, and recently passed out walking home from his girlfriend’s house. Fortunately somebody saw him lying in the street, called 911 and didn’t leave until the ambulance got there. He passed out again four days later, but fortunately this time he was at his girlfriend’s house. She called 911 and the paramedic that showed up was the same one that responded four days prior. Soon Uncle Norman will not be able to live alone because of the risk of passing out and no body being there. Currently Nana –his mother- phones him every two to four hours and if there is no answer she heads over to his house.