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Ray (nickname: Baby Beef, left), Pattie, right.
You know what joke is coming. |
“Am I
Blessed or What?”
When I asked Pattie Spicher to
sit for an interview, I knew she’d have a tale to tell about dealing successfully
with type-1 diabetes. I first met Pattie in 1972, when she married Ray Spicher,
my high school friend. By that time, she had learned, at age 20, that she had
“adult diabetes,” as doctors then labeled her condition.
Pattie was petite – and still is
– but neither she nor Ray could have imagined how complex the journey ahead would
prove.
I had been discharged from the
Marines by that time, so I wasn’t exactly a wimp. But Pattie, like every “veteran”
diabetic I have ever known, has proven herself way tougher than me.
If someone you love is new to
this life-altering diagnosis – that they are type-1 – I believe Pattie is an
inspiration. She has persevered and with “God’s help,” as she says, has led a
full life, filled with joy. That’s the first lesson from her tale. Pattie will
tell you being type-1 is “a pain in the butt.” There’s still no cure, so you’ll
always have to watch what you eat. And you can’t wish the disease away. Like Pattie,
you have to set your mind to the challenge and do the best you can.
To Donate to JDRF, please click here.
When she was first diagnosed,
care was primitive by today’s standards, and she was informed she could never
have children. One doctor told her she might die before she turned thirty. At
first, her medical condition was misdiagnosed. For over a year, no one thought
to start her on insulin. They believed she had what today we would call type-2
diabetes, an increasingly common health problem in this country, as the average
American’s eating habits grow worse and worse.
In those days, all Pattie could
do to test her blood sugar levels was pee on strips, like those pregnancy tests.
If the strip turned bright green, that meant sugar levels were high. All she
could do to lower her levels, or so doctors believed, was “take a walk” or skip
a meal. “They would starve you,” is how she explained it, and compared
treatment in the early 70s to that of Thomas Jefferson’s wife. Experts now
suspect Martha Jefferson died in 1782, from the complications of type-1 diabetes.
So Pattie tested and did her best. She stands five-and-a-half feet tall, but
her weight plunged from 110 to 90.
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Pattie on her wedding day - 1972. |
If you know the history of
type-1 diabetes, until a hundred years ago it was an early death sentence if
your immune system had been compromised. Insulin was not discovered until 1922,
and Pattie was learning about the disease forty-nine years later. Now she’s been
dealing for fifty-three years.
And here’s the second lesson to
ponder. She has seen miraculous improvements in how doctors help patients approach
their new lives, and that’s why she says she’s “so thankful for JDRF.” As all
who have loved ones afflicted with this disease learn, the Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation has been leading the search for a cure, and funding
research into better treatment, for many years.
In her case, once it was understood
she had what was then called “juvenile diabetes,” she was finally put on
insulin, and instructed on how to give herself shots. She had a chart to hang
in the bathroom to help her keep track. Shot in the left arm one day, right arm
the next. Left butt cheek, right butt cheek, left thigh, right, and a shot in
the stomach for “fun.” Then start all over again.
As I said, I had been in the
Marines, and knew how to curse; I’d have got about as far as the first tender cheek,
and I’d have started f-bombing the world. Pattie will only admit she was “mad,”
but also said she was determined diabetes wouldn’t beat her – and, as we know
now, it could not.
In Ray and Pattie’s life, one of
the great hurdles that had to be cleared was that they badly wanted children.
But in that era, they were admonished that it would be dangerous for Pattie to try.
They talked to Catholic Charities about adoption; but when the charity followed
up with Pattie’s doctors, on why she couldn’t have children, they told the
charity folks that she might die early, and it wouldn’t be fair to place a baby
with the Spicher family. So it seemed parenthood was out.
In those days, Pattie worked at
a women’s clothing store called “5-7-9,” for the sizes they sold. It was in a
mall.
When people still loved malls!
One afternoon, God took a hand.
A customer came “almost floating in,” Pattie remembers, and told her he was
shopping for his wife. She helped him pick out something nice and asked about the
occasion. “My wife just found out she’s pregnant, and she’s a type-1 diabetic,”
the man replied. “So we’re both thrilled.”
When Pattie said she was type-1,
too, he told her about a study being conducted at the University of Cincinnati,
gave her the name of Dr. Harvey Knowles
Jr., and left with a gift for his wife.
Pattie told her boss she was leaving
work immediately, drove home, used the land line (this is back in the day), and
called UC to get the information she needed.
Knowing that pregnancy was
possible, and having been enrolled in the study, herself, she and Ray decided, “We
would put it in God’s hands.” In 1976, she got pregnant for the first time. As
she told me, in those days, the only ways to test your blood were to use the urine
strips or draw blood, which was most accurate. So, during her pregnancy, she had
a pic line put in one arm. She was told she’d have to spend a week in the
hospital during the first semester, a week during the second, and the entire
third trimester in a hospital bed.
“I wasn’t sure I could do that,”
she said in deadpan fashion, “because I really don’t like hospitals.”
I had to laugh.
So she “solved” that problem by
having her first son, Scott, at 28 weeks. He tipped the scales at three pounds,
three ounces.
“Three pounds, three ounces!” I
said. “Whoa.” I had been premature myself, and my mother had eight miscarriages
in eleven tries. So I knew that for Ray and Pattie, this must have been a
terrible shock.
“Wow,” I added. “I weighed four,
five.”
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Children weren't supposed to be an option.
Scott, left, decided to arrive early, Nick, right followed five years later. |
Pattie is lively, and loves to
talk, but had difficulty continuing. Doctor Knowles, she gulped, “was the best
endocrinologist ever.” She switched a moment to talk about when her second son,
Nick, was on the way in 1982. One day, Knowles told her during an office visit that
he was “so excited.” There was a new machine, he said, adding, “There will
never be another invention like this, ever!” You had to draw blood, and
you placed it on strips, and calibrated the machine high, and draw blood and
calibrate it low, and because she was in a study, they gave her a machine to
take home. At first, it was about 8 x 10 inches. You had to fumble with the strips,
and wipe them off after you touched them with blood, then use a stopwatch, also
provided, to know when to check results. “Pattie,” Dr. Knowles had assured her,
“there will be nothing to top this in the next twenty years.” In fact, it was only
then, after several years of battling diabetes, that she could finally get real
blood sugar numbers, an “actual number, 112, or whatever it might be.” The first
machine she was given was “like six days old,” because she was in the UC program,
and you couldn’t lug it around, of course. So she and Ray had a table set up at
home. By the time she had Nick, the machine had been reduced to 5 x 7, and you
didn’t have to calibrate it yourself.
“It was amazing how fast things
moved,” she said.
This writer’s family has seen great
improvements in care, as well, watching our youngest daughter handle diabetes,
starting in 2005. So far, Pattie’s story tracked positive, as Emily’s has. So I
asked to go back to Scott for a moment. “So, he’s so small, you have to be
worried about his overall health…”
“Don’t even talk about it,” she
replied, choking up a moment.”
And Dr. Knowles,” she finally
continued, “was so awesome.” He told Ray, with that first pregnancy, “If they
come running out of the delivery room…” and she laughs at her emotion, and
wipes away tears. “If they came running out of the delivery room, then he would
know there had been trouble.”
At that, she starts crying. “I
still cry,” she admits, “and in fact every time I call Scott on his birthday I
start crying again, and he just says, ‘Mom are you ever gonna get over this,’
and I say, ‘No, Scott, I’m never gonna
get over it.’”
In those days, Ray was coaching
baseball and teaching at Hughes High, and many of his students were poor. He often
had to pick players up at home at 6:00 a.m., so they could practice before classes.
One day, her water broke, and she called her sister for a ride to the hospital.
Scott couldn’t go home until he weighed at least five pounds. So Ray would come
up to the room after work, and see her, and being “dog-tired,” fall asleep in
the bed.
But they didn’t come running out
on April 8, 1977, when Scott the Giant crashed the party of Life. “I thank God
every day,” Pattie says, and her faith is strong. “Am I blessed, or what?” she
adds.
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Had care for diabetics not improved, Pattie wouldn't be here.
Nor would her seven grandchildren. |
Here then: another lesson. I
think most families of type-1 diabetics learn that it makes everyone involved
stronger in all kinds of ways. It steels people with resolve – as it did Pattie
and Ray. Her husband went on to become a highly-respected principal in the
Cincinnati Public Schools – retired – got rehired as principal at Princeton
High School within days – worked a few more
years – retired again – and got hired again within a week, to be principal at
Madeira High. Scott didn’t stay tiny for long, went on to earn a degree from
the University of Cincinnati, and got into education, himself. Today, he’s
principal at Dry Ridge Elementary School in Kentucky. Their second son, Nick,
also thrived, also did well in school and sports, and graduated from Miami
University, in part aided by a scholarship for left-handers. Both young men married
well, and there are two daughters-in-law that Ray and Pattie love, and seven
grandkids, one adopted from Haiti – now eleven, and a killer on a set of drums.
And Pattie is still here.
Take that Death! You lose.
Today, Pattie is still petite, still
plays pickleball and golf, and knows how to have fun. So how does one deal with
type-1 diabetes for more than fifty years? As she puts it, she set her mind from
the start. “Nobody was going to beat me,” she said. She decided she would do
whatever she must in order to meet the challenges posed by this insidious
disease. During her first pregnancy, she added, “I would have run down the
street naked, if that’s what it took” to have a healthy child. She also acknowledged,
it’s never fun. She remembers thinking how nice a cure would be. “I just wanted
one day where I could eat this, and not worry about what it was.” She still remembers learning to give herself
shots. You had to practice on an orange.
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Grandson A.J. is a killer on the drums. |
My daughter Emily had to learn the
same way; and when I try to tell Pattie about it, I can’t, until I compose
myself. In Emily’s case, she’s been dealing for almost two decades. As a teen,
she hated having to check everything she ate, and at one point rebelled and
said she didn’t care. So I asked Pattie about health insurance, because Emily
is a nurse now, but even with good insurance, paying for the supplies to fight
diabetes is a drain. Pattie remembers a time, when she maxed out her medical coverage
and fell into what was then called the “donut hole,” and had to pay for insulin
herself at the end of the year. One day, she went to pick up a three-months’ supply
and was told it would cost $1,900. She just left the insulin there and went
home.
But you can’t just leave
insulin behind. Type-1 diabetics must have it to live. For older Americans,
recent changes in how the federal government negotiates drug prices, have
capped out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month. Young diabetics, often lacking the
best healthcare, face much steeper costs. Some try to “cut back” on how much
they use; but that can backfire badly, too.
So Pattie knows it’s not an easy
road to travel. I’ve bicycled across the USA twice, and plan to do it again, to
raise money for JDRF. Having type-1 diabetes is like pedaling uphill every mile
of every day. But what else can you do? Pattie has been pedaling hard for
fifty-three years, and the key lesson I’ve gleaned from Pattie and every type-1
diabetic I know, is that they learn to pedal hard because if they stop it can’t
work. If your loved one has been diagnosed recently, you can be sure that with
your love and support, they’ll grind up every hill, every day, and you’ll be
able to help them in myriad ways.
JDRF has done all that an
organization can to build better “bicycles” for type-1s to ride, and someday,
with “God looking out,” as Pattie would say, we’ll get to the end of the ride,
where there’s a cure.
To Donate to JDRF, please click here.
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