A daughter and caregiver describes the toll diabetes took on her mother’s life and its impact on their family. By Padmini Chandrasekaran
An accident or an afterthought, I was born in 1954 when my mother was 38 years old. I weighed almost 4kg and the exertions of a normal delivery must have exhausted my mother. Or so my parents thought, as after her delivery, my mother continued to be listless, tired and slightly irritable. She felt the urge to pass urine frequently and she felt embarrassed about going out. She was normally an exuberant person and this sudden lack of interest in everyday affairs worried my father. They decided to consult the doctor. The blood test and urine samples proved that she was a diabetic. In the 1950s, what kind of diabetes she was suffering from was not diagnosed. She was 39 years old then and had probably conceived me as a diabetic.
My mother was the eldest among her siblings. We never knew if my grandparents or any other family member had a history of diabetes. They were never tested for it. However, my mother’s younger brother tested positive for diabetes when he was in his early 50s as did one of my brothers, years later.
Thankfully, I had a healthy childhood. My siblings and I were unaware of the genetic implications. We did not take any precautions against diabetes. But we ate home-cooked meals (there was no fast food in those days) and I played a lot of sports. That may have saved me.
My mother was put on medication immediately after her diagnosis. Monthly visits to the Central Government doctor saw the arrival of colourful tablets of various shapes and sizes and each visit saw an increase in the intake of these tablets. Probably some were vitamins, but I don’t think my mother had any clue as to why she was taking so many tablets at one go. It was a fascinating ritual to see her sort out her tablets and pop them into her mouth with more than a glass of water. Naturally the increase in water intake made her urinate more often.
In 1965, my father retired and we moved to Madras. My eldest brother, by then a family physician, took my mother under his wing and started monitoring her condition and medicine intake. The number of tablets she took was restricted drastically and initially she rebelled against it. It took a lot of cajoling and coaxing to convince her that she could do without them.
But by then the damage had been done. She developed ulcer. Till then only her sugar intake had been restricted and she had no problems with that. She relied implicitly on the doctor’s instructions and I don’t ever remember her taking a sweet or eating one on the sly. To prevent her sugar level from going down, she was asked to keep a packet of sugar or a couple of chocolates in her purse. She was amused by that and invariably distributed the chocolates to the children in the building.
But by this point in her life, she was eating very bland food, but she never complained. Her staple diet was curd rice with boiled vegetables, dal and spinach with absolutely NO spice. She cut down on her milk intake [except with coffee and Complan] but had plenty of buttermilk. She could not tolerate even a single chilly [of the red or green variety] and complained of loose motion and severe stomach cramps if she took any. She took strong medication for the upset stomach. She always kept a strip of 10 tablets of Lomotil hidden in her purse. I, too, have bought these tablets for her not knowing she was not allowed to have so many of them.
In spite of food restrictions, my mother put on a lot of weight between the time she was in her 50s to when she was 70 years of age. Her blood pressure was now high and she was under medication to bring the pressure down. She was never fond of exerting herself, hated to walk, and my father, who loved to cook, always helped her in the kitchen. Yoga had not gained ground then and no other form of alternate medicine or exercise was ever considered.
My doctor brother monitored her health and medication. He was just a phone call away and visited every fortnight. The diabetes was kept under reasonable control. However by the time she was 65, she had graduated to taking insulin injections. Unlike now, the needles were thicker and it was sad to see her thighs full of needle marks. Later she took to injecting the insulin into the underpart of her stomach. Disposable syringes were not in vogue then and so the syringes had to be boiled before every use - the needles, syringes and the tongs! It became a routine job for my father and me.
Meanwhile she had to have cataract surgery. The doctors refused to operate on her since her teeth were bad! Then began the extraction of all her teeth, the good and the bad. My brother monitored her pulse rate and checked her blood pressure while the tooth was being pulled out. This painful process went on for more than three months before the cataract operation [a 3-day hospitalisation for her and my father] was successfully completed.
By the time she was 70, she had grown weaker. Losing my father was a traumatic experience for her. She had depended on him for everything. She had developed both heart problems and bladder problems. Adult diapers were unavailable and her clothes had to be washed and rewashed with Dettol. Special instructions were given to the servant and extra money, too.
My doctor brother adjusted her medicine and food intake almost every week. He also soothed the ruffled feathers of people attending to her as her last year was quite painful for all. Though she was able to move around by herself, she had to have her personal needs attended to. She however remained quite cheerful in spite of her worsening heart condition. Her daily dose of insulin was administered on her forearms as the skin on her thighs and stomach had become so hard due to repeated injections, it was difficult for the needle to penetrate.
Then she had a stroke. She slowly and painfully slipped into coma, survived the agony of losing her speech and other faculties for two months before she succumbed to the inevitable. Seeing her immobile with bedsores [in spite of the water bed] made me think of dignity during the last stages of one’s life and how futile the battle really was. I prayed hard for her death knowing well that I would feel like an orphan once she passed away. Sad but true… there was a sense of relief when it was all over.
