This is an update of a post I did on Audrey Lake in 2011, the second time I pedaled across the United States to raise money for JDRF. The organization has now been renamed: “Breakthrough T1D.”
Some people know I am pedaling across the country again, at age 75.
I will be honest. When I am bucking strong headwinds, I think about quitting and flying home. Or on beastly hot days…
I want to stop.
But Audrey has been fighting Type-1 for 62 years. She doesn’t have the option. She has to fight every day. So I wanted to catch up with her again. As I said last time, she doesn’t complain. She always has a smile and a ready laugh when she talks.
Audrey and husband Bill are an example of how this disease doesn’t have to beat you. Bill first really met Audrey while walking to class in college, and Audrey, going the other way, said was going to the dentist.
I told Audrey, “That sounds like a great pickup line,” and she laughed.
(Try it ladies, and see!)
Bill had seen Audrey around, romance now bloomed, and he remembers telling his mother he wanted to marry Audrey, and she warned him most type-1’s lived only fifty years, and went blind or lost limbs. “Well, then,” he replied, “we’ll have thirty good years.”
Fortunately, care has vastly improved and they’ve had sixty plus and they’re still going strong.
I asked Audrey what she has been most thankful for in her life and she didn’t hesitate. “Two healthy kids,” she said. Their first child, Bill, was born almost three months early, and went straight to the incubator. He’s now a success in the IT field, Kim, their second, is now a nurse, and they have a granddaughter who is a cardiac doctor.
They also have a lake house up in Michigan, and stay there every summer and fall, “Until the first snow,” Audrey adds. She says she’s also thankful for a successful career in the classroom, and told me how much she enjoyed working with kids.
So Mrs. Lake is still going strong. Not as strong as before, because we all slow down.
But Audrey and her husband, with the help of the rest of the family, have defeated the disease.
Old post below:
Don’t mess with Mrs. Lake.
We all know how terrifying it can seem when you first hear someone you love has been diagnosed as a type-1 diabetic. But if nothing else, keeping this blog reminds me that having a diabetic child doesn’t mean the world is ending.
It's scary, of course, and you and they have to be careful; but it
doesn’t necessarily ruin your life.
Audrey Lake, a retired Loveland teacher, is proof of that. Audrey has been
dealing with type-1 diabetes for going on half a century. Yep, you’ve got
that right: She was diagnosed back in 1962, when she was a 17-year-old
senior at Greenway High School in Coleraine, Minnesota. You can
figure out how old she is, if you do the math, but I am too much of a
gentleman.
Audrey is a type-1 diabetic – and then
again, she isn’t. She has the disease. That’s true. But she
deals with life like she doesn’t. That is: She doesn’t let it define
her, or sour her attitude towards life, or in any way hinder what she wants to
do. She started teaching at Loveland Junior High (later Loveland
Middle School) in 1981, which is when I first met her. At the
time her son, Bill, was in my class and Audrey took over for another teacher
who left the profession, and ended up with her son in her English class. One
day, I stepped out in the hall, and there was Bill standing by his mother’s
classroom door. He was a straight-A student, so I asked, “What are you
doing out here, Bill?”
“Aww, my mom said I was disturbing class, and she threw me out,” he admitted with
an embarrassed smile.
So the lesson was: Mom doesn’t play favorites; and don’t mess with Mrs.
Lake.
What all of the rest of us on staff soon found out was what a remarkable lady
Mrs. Lake was. At lunch, sitting in the teachers’ lounge, we watched
Audrey poke her finger with those old-fashioned lancets, the ones that looked
like little aluminum spears, and marveled because she never complained and
never ever stopped smiling. She did admit recently that it was “very
painful” to use those old lancets, several times every day. But she wasn’t
complaining. She was just making an observation.
Audrey doesn’t look “tough” but she is and this helped her in dealing with
diabetes. She grew up one of eight children, and for a good part of her
early days lived in crowded little homes, including one where the kids hung
sheets and bedspreads over wires to give themselves “privacy” in one big shared
room. Even when Audrey talks about tough times growing up in northern
Minnesota, she seems happy about life. In fact, that’s Audrey, diabetic,
yes, but happy in whatever she does. After graduating from high school she
attended Itasca Junior College for two years and then went on to the University
of Minnesota, where she earned her degree in education. She is married and
has two kids, Bill and Kim, also a great young person to have in class, and
last time I heard, involved in nursing.
Audrey, of course, has been diabetic since the Dark Ages – when care was more
taxing and life expectancy was often shortened by this disease. The
circumstances surrounding her diagnosis are interesting. “We were going to
have a chemistry test,” she admitted recently, “and I wasn’t really
prepared. One of my friends wasn’t feeling well and she was going to leave
school and go to the doctor, so I thought, maybe I’ll just make something up
and go along.” Audrey had been feeling tired, anyway, and when she talked
to the nurse at the doctor’s office, they decided to run some tests. Blood was
drawn and the nurse came back and told Audrey her blood sugar was very high,
and they should send her to the hospital at once. Audrey had to get back
to school to catch a bus for the twenty-mile ride home, so she was getting
nervous, and they let her go, making her promise to return the next morning.
When she got home that afternoon her mom thought she was lying about where she
had been, but soon realized Audrey was serious. The next day it was off to the
hospital for what would become a ten-day stay. In 1962, she remembers having to
boil glass syringes and needles every day so she could give herself insulin
shots. Her blood sugar would go up and down, and it was much harder to
keep good control. Audrey never let it get her down, kept smiling, kept
checking, four to six times a day, year after year. Today, of course, she
has seen tremendous progress in treating the disease. She wears a pump now
and doesn’t let diabetes slow her down.
“I can do almost anything anyone else can do,” she says and for fifty years she’s
been proving just that.
If you’re a parent, with a child recently diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, keep
Audrey in mind. She’s not afraid and never once has let this medical
problem dampen her mood.
If you see Audrey, expect to see a smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment