“I’d rather die than have my leg chopped off!” my mother boomed. She was 60. Her leg was gangrened from diabetes. When it was amputated, she didn’t die. For the next nine years, she refused a wheelchair, refused to exercise, and refused to inject herself with insulin. She dominated the living room and her husband of nearly 40 years from her hospitalized bed. In her late fifties, around 1970, my mother’s moods had radically swung from sudden angry outbursts to demands to immediately eat. My older sisters thought her erratic behavior presaged another nervous breakdown. She was later diagnosed diabetic. Before … Continue reading Diabetes – The Body’s Civil War