Running to cure diabetes

So proud...my daughter is going to do the George Eastman House Photo 5k this year in Rochester, NY. She's setting up a team for the American Diabetes Association.

My mother and grandmother died from complications due to diabetes. My daughter and I are doing everything in our power to help others beat this horrific disease.

You can donate at
http://www.crowdrise.com/sadieulasze

Here's our reasoning...my mom's story.

• Imagine a time when every family sat down at dinnertime and meat and potatoes was the norm.
• Imagine a time when vegetables were cooked until all the minerals and vitamins were destroyed.
• Imagine a time when humans consumed high quantities of fat and had no information on what they were eating.

Back in the 1960’s I was just a tyke. I remember going to grandmas and grandpa’s house for long days of cutting grass and working in the field on their 150 plus acre farm. ..and then there was dinner. Grandpa was a husky man, not really fat, but a bit overweight. Grandma was thin, pale, weak….diabetic!

Salty ham, meaty stews with fattening gravies and breads were the toppings to the pool table covered by plywood and a tablecloth for the massive feast of seventeen people. A feast of calories, fat and salt. This is how I remember grandma…she could not eat what she made for everyone else. I was told she could only have vegetables and fish. No sweets.

I remember the day when saccharine came out on the market and she was overjoyed that "Tab", from the Coke division, was on the market. Something she could drink. How did she know that saccharine would cause cancer?

Flash forward…

I was 14 when my brother brought home a weight bench and weights. I was mesmerized. He used them once, and they sat there collecting dust. I was listening to the record player, (thin disks carved with grooves which made lovely melodies one could dance to when place on the player provided…nowadays CD’s). My brothers, their friends were in the room too. I sat on the bench and did what I was later to find out was called a bench press. At 14 I could bench press 150 pounds.

The challenge began….my brothers, their friends and myself and I fell in love. I liked lifting weights. It made me feel strong....confident...
As I worked out and gained muscle I remember my mother stating, “My baby! She’s becoming a man!”. I said, “mom, women can’t get that big”, then I flexed my rock hard bicep and grinned. I loved it, she hated it.

About 2 years later I noticed that mom was pale and had gained quite a bit of weight. I was worried. I asked her, I pleaded with her, I begged her, “mama…please work out with me and lose weight. I’m worried about you”…she wouldn’t listen. Her response was always the same. “Women don’t workout, women don’t sweat….men sweat”. 

When I was 16 my mom started complaining about her feet. She said they hurt. This was the beginning of a nightmare I would never wish upon anyone.

She wouldn’t go to the doctor; she refused to admit she was ill. By the time she decided to see someone the dreaded disease that my grandmother had took over her body. I remember her asking me about a sore on the back of her foot. It looked like a blister that wasn’t healing. It couldn’t…it was gangrene. She had to have it cut out and it took a very long time for it to heal.

Her doctor had her doing blood sugar tests 3 times a day. At breakfast the results from the meter would read 60, then she would eat and it would skyrocket to over 300! Her body could not maintain or produce the correct amount of insulin. She began insulin shots. No matter what she did, she could not control her sugar level.

I remember the horrific scenes…first it was the gangrene blister, then a big toe lost, half a foot, the half of the other foot, and finally her left leg up to her knee…and still she couldn’t control the sugars. She was in a wheelchair and could not go anywhere, do anything, without help. The diabetes was eating away at her body a little at a time. Next came the stroke, then another.

I couldn’t stop crying the day she lay there in intensive care with them telling me to call your family, she’s dying. My mom wanted to go home to die, but since she had no insurance we could not get an ambulance to transport her home. It was a three mile walk, so we got her in her wheelchair and my dad and I pushed her the three miles. It was the longest three miles of my life.

I sat with her that night until late. She sat in her bed and said she couldn’t feel her hands. Then she told me she was blind. She couldn’t see me anymore. I felt like my heart stopped.

I was exhausted, and I knew she had to let go. I held her as I told her that we had been selfish. We didn’t want her to leave us, so we made her suffer with all the hellish surgeries and treatments. I told her I loved her and said it was okay that she lets go…my last words to her were “I love you mom, and I’ll see you on the flip side”. I kissed her and told my dad I was taking my daughter home. I didn’t want Mercedes, (my daughter), to see grandma pass.

I layed in bed with the phone next to my head knowing it was a matter of time before I got the call. It was about 2 hours later. My dad called to let me know she was gone.

She didn’t take care of herself. Women don’t sweat…meat and potatoes…

...it was a long time ago, how would they know? The research and data was not around for them.

People ask me why. My friends and some of my family members think I’m crazy. Why do I work out like I do? Why am I a vegetarian? Why can’t you go to the party with us, why can’t you skip a workout? If they only knew. I tell them this story, yet they don’t completely understand the pain and suffering that diabetes brings to the stricken, and the family that loves them.

Because of this, I am the way I am. I refuse to be a victim of such a horrid disease. I refuse to let others tell me I can’t take care of myself. And I am constantly reminding others of their fate if they continue on an unhealthy path in life.
I love you mom…see you on the flip side! <3

Here are pics of my beautiful mother, in her younger years, and before she dies from diabetes.

Please donate to my daughter's 5K run for the American Diabetes Association.