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Show - 0 0 - to think back. One grandfather had died of pneumonia a t an early age, as had his father. The other grandfather had suffered a heart attack in his seventies. One grandmother had died of what was called "heart failure" a t the age of eighty; the other had had cancer in her mid-eighties? One aunt had died suddenly of i n t e s t i n a l blockage in her l a t e t h i r t i e s. The remainder of these two large families were s t i l l a l i v e, most of them in t h e i r eighties, two over ninety. The Professor shook his head? "No," he said? "Well," the doctor replied. "You are the first then." He said it with just a touch of humor; then he prickly became serious. "I don't want to alarm you. Diabetes is not all that uncommon in persons your age. And it can be controlled?" The Processor recalled a classmate in high school, a young girl who had seemed different from everyone else because she had to take insulin shots. He had a vision of himself, or his wife, giving him a shot of Insulin daily. The doctor hastened to correct this notion. "Usually? it can be controlled by diet?" He pulled a thin pamphlet from the pocket of his white jacket. "Here is a diet I'd like you to try." He handed it to the Professor? "First of all, we'd like to get your weight down. Then see if the foLood-sugar levels off." |