My beautiful wife, Mary Nir, was an extraordinary soul. She was the kindest person I ever knew. She had a wickedly off-beat sense of humor. There was no one she wouldn't stop to help. If you knew her for 10 minutes, she was already your friend, and if you spent a day with her, it felt like you were best friends.
She was my best friend for 10 years. And she was taken from us, tragically, horribly young, at the age of 35, just last month.
Mary (who occasionally chimed in around here as MaryNYC) suffered from Type 1 diabetes, which she was diagnosed with at age 5. Mary's friends and family are honoring her memory through charity, at a special page set up with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Mary was a longtime supporter of the JDRF, and I would be incredibly grateful if any members of the Daily Kos community wished to join us in our efforts:
Please contribute here to the JDRF.
Mary took incredibly good care of herself and was very active: She earned a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do, went running regularly, and even took trapeze lessons despite being terrified of heights. Just watch this amazing video of her flying through the air with the greatest of ease:
But despite every effort, Mary became a victim of this dread disease. Type 1 diabetes is often not a well-understood condition, but it is an incredibly difficult one to live with. Allow me to tell you a little bit about it, and how it affected Mary's life.
In a healthy person, the pancreas produces insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. A Type 1 diabetic like Mary, however, produces no insulin at all and must inject insulin to prevent her blood sugar from becoming too high. (In Type 2 diabetes, the more common type, the body produces some insulin but not enough.)
For Mary, that meant being aware of every single carbohydrate she put into her body—whether a piece of bread, a carrot stick, or a glass of juice. All carbs are sugar, and all sugar will raise a diabetic's blood sugar levels.
So for every meal or snack Mary ate, or every favorite cocktail she imbibed, she had to consider how many carbs she was consuming, and inject enough insulin to keep her blood sugar at a healthy level. And this was no easy task: At home, you can read the nutrition information on the back of the box, but guessing how many carbs there are in a bowl of penne puttanesca at your favorite Italian restaurant is hard. Really hard.
That's why diabetics have to constantly test their blood sugar levels, to make sure they've used the right amount of insulin. This is done by pricking a finger with a lancet, drawing out a drop of blood, and placing it on a special "test strip" that is in turn placed in a device known as a glucometer, which can read blood sugar levels.
If a blood sugar reading was too high, then Mary would have to take more insulin to bring down her blood sugar levels. If it was too low, she'd have to consume sugar to bring them back up. (I'll admit that this part wasn't always awful, because sometimes it meant Mary got to have her favorite candy!)
But testing blood sugar levels, like administering insulin, is also a difficult process—and an expensive one. Insurance will often only pay for three test strips a day, but to remain in good control of their blood sugar, diabetics must test more often. Mary was fortunate that she could afford additional test strips on her own, and she tested her blood sugar levels constantly, but many diabetics cannot.
And if a diabetic's blood sugar levels are too high for too long, that's when long-term complications can set in, like kidney disease, nerve damage, loss of eyesight, and the amputation of limbs. Conversely, when a diabetic's blood sugar is too low, she can become disoriented, feel "shaky," and even pass out. Sadly, it appears that Mary suffered from an incident of extreme low blood sugar which she was not able to treat on her own, leading to her tragic death.
But new technologies that the JDRF is helping to develop will in turn help others avoid this terrible fate. In particular, clinical trials are now underway to develop an "artificial pancreas" that would regulate both high and low blood sugar for Type 1 diabetics. Mary was hopeful that one day she'd be able to benefit from that technology herself.
Sadly, she won't, but others can, and she would want them to. Mary once told me that diabetes suffused her life so completely that even in her dreams, she was still diabetic. But it was also her dream that we'd one day live in a world with no diabetes, and it's a dream I share.
So if you would like to help make this dream a reality and do a great honor to Mary, please contribute whatever you can:
Please contribute here to the JDRF.
Though we decided last year we were no longer going to remain together as a couple, Mary and I never stopped loving one another, and I will never stop loving her. Now that she is gone, I will cherish her memory forever, and I'll do anything I can to help people like her. It's what she would have done.
P.S. To find out if your employer matches donations to the JDRF, please click here.