By: Jean Johnson for Wounds1 Part One
Flat on your back under the fluorescent lights of the Emergency Room is no place to be on an inky spring night, says Tara Sullivan. Thinking back on her venture into one of Portland, Oregon’s finest in 1998, she said, “I was really there for cramps, but they didn’t find anything. In the process, though, they did a urinalysis, and the nurse said the sugar was high. I didn’t think anything at the time, until on our way out my husband asked the physician about it. Then came the bombshell. It was something like, ‘oh yes, by the way, you’re diabetic.’”
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Diabetes symptoms may often seem harmless. It is important to recognize diabetes early to reduce the complications of the disease
Some diabetes symptoms include:
Frequent urination
Excessive thirst
Extreme hunger
Unusual weight loss
Increased fatigue
Irritability
Blurry vision
To learn more about diabetes and its treatments, visit
The American Diabetes Association |
“Here he was this white male in his fifties,” sixty-five-year-old Sullivan continued in her Irish spitfire. “He seemed so indifferent to me. Even before during the exam, he acted like he was tired and bored. I thought to myself ‘who cares, all I need is a good scientist, so to heck with the bedside manner.’ But the way he delivered the news on the diabetes – like he didn’t think it even important. I mean, how could he not tell me? In my book that was not good science, so it goes without saying that I was not impressed with him – his indifference.”The diagnoses – and the experience – couldn’t have come at a worse time. She and her husband had just moved from San Francisco to Portland so he could take a position as lama at one of the Buddhist centers. “My health status at the time was really bad – fatigued, run down, depressed. Oh my heavens, I was in terrible shape. The diabetes was doing a number on me, and I didn’t realize it,” she said. “I felt tired a lot and totally uprooted. My husband had a full-time engagement immediately, but did I have one? No. And it was further emphasized by him being the teacher, while I wasn’t anything.”
“You feel so mean. Like some horrible monster. Sometimes I just furious at my husband and any student that got too close to him. I was so angry that if my feet were damp, and it was hard to put my socks on, I’d go off on a rage. Just flaming anger, you know?”
Although Sullivan studied art at the Pratt Institute, UC Berkeley’s San Francisco campus, and the San Francisco Art Institute and has earned a living as an illustrator, book designer, and in advertising for years, it took her awhile to get her studio going after the move to Portland. The Pacific Northwest city’s gray skies and dreary rains didn’t help matters.
“Oh yes, the weather. Hardly what I was used to as a Californian. Between that and one health problem after another, I just ran out of strength. At one point I was so depressed I was suicidal. Going through menopause wasn’t helping of course – I think the ringer that menopause sends you through is way underestimated. Anyway, there I was just lying around the house and doing nothing with this new diagnosis of diabetes hanging over my head, and my husband worried.”
Continued in Part Two
