2012-05-08-Diabetes
Seminars@Hadley
How Diabetes Saved My Life
Presented by
Urban Miyares
Moderated by
Larry Muffett
May 8, 2012
Larry Muffett
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Larry Muffett. I am a member of Hadley’s seminar team and I also work in curricular affairs here at the Hadley School for the Blind. Today’s provocative topic is ‘How Diabetes Saved My Life’. Your presenter is a familiar one to those of you that have been involved with Seminars@Hadley in the past, Urban Miyares. Urban is a nationally-renowned speaker, entrepreneur, and athlete and a fascinating speaker, one that I find particularly inspiring. So today we are going to hear Urban’s interesting and inspiring take on dealing with diabetes for over four decades. So, let me introduce Urban and I am going to turn the microphone over to him and let him get started.
Urban Miyares
Well thank you Larry and it’s a pleasure to once again be on Hadley’s seminar program. For those of you who have heard me before or know me, hello again! I am going to talk about how diabetes saved my life and give you a little bit of history on it but before I start we had an early question and that was the background of my name, Urban, as well as my surname, Miyares.
I’ll start with my last name first, Miyares. My father is Cuban so it’s a Spanish last name, Miyares, from Cuba. And just to let you know my mother’s background – my mother is German and Russian. So I guess I am kind of a Heinz 57 as they say, in a way. The name Urban – no I’m not a descendant of Pope Urban the second. He is the Pope by the way who started the Crusades and brought celibacy to the church. I have been called a troublemaker so maybe there is some relationship.
But the name Urban – my father’s name was Urban and it goes back, my son’s name is Urban – when I asked my uncle, who is in his nineties, “I’d like to do a background on our family name and our heritage” all he said is “You don’t want to know, don’t bother.” So we’ll leave it at that.I am Urban Miyares and I am the second Urban that I can document – maybe there are others in our family background – and my son is the third.
Ok, back to the topic ‘How Diabetes Saved My Life’. You know we all have a story – if you have diabetes or know someone – we all have a story about how our diabetes was diagnosed, so please bear with me while I tell you my story. Growing up in New York City, a healthy young man, I got out of high school and started working, engaged to a young lady I knew since I was thirteen.
I got a notice from Uncle Sam in 1967 saying he wanted me in the U.S. Army. And with that I was inducted into the service. And, by the way, during basic training they gave me a weekend pass allowing me to fly from Fort Jackson, South Carolina back to New York City to marry my wife. I flew in on Friday, got the blood test, Saturday we got married, and Sunday I was back on the base.
So we had a distant early marriage with no honeymoon and then I got a Christmas break and I came home for four or five days, and then back on the base for further training before I got my orders in early spring to go to Vietnam. I came home and that’s when we had our honeymoon. There is a snapshot. In the first two years of marriage we were together two weeks.
Anyway, I went to Vietnam and soon became a squad leader and a platoon leader with the 9th infantry division. And while going on battlefield operations back and forth, you know, you go from base camp out sometimes two or three days at a time. And then coming back, I started feeling sick with dizziness and blurred vision, and then vomiting soon started. So we’d go on an operation and I’d come back and I went to sick hall.
And the first time at sick hall they diagnosed the heat, they found out I didn’t have malaria, and said “You’re ok, go back out” and gave me some more salt tablets to take. We’d go out on an operation and come back, and I’m just getting sicker and sicker. I couldn’t hold down any food, just vomiting all the time. We were in south Vietnam, 9th infantry division, and going through the rice paddies was common. I used to like going through the rice paddies because all of a sudden I’d have to go to the bathroom – I’d have to go to the bathroom all the time – and a great place to pee was in rice paddies, like peeing in a pool I guess.
But I was getting sick. I was really sick and leading men into combat, and had blurred vision and I could sleep at any time; just not feeling well, almost as if I had the flu. I’d come back and the next diagnosis was battle fatigue. They told me “Take 24 hours off and you’ll be fine for duty again.” And that happened and during that rest period I am still sick, just not doing well. And then we went on a third operation and the same thing happened, and coming back from that next operation – all of this was in a two week period – that third diagnosis at sick hall they said I had peptic ulcers and gave me Maalox and shipped me out in a field again saying I’d be fine for duty.
Right after that third diagnosis the company commander came in and said that if I didn’t stop trying to get out of duty, malingering, they’d bust me down to a private. I’m 20 years of age, not even shaving yet, and leading men into combat, and sick as a dog. I really thought I was going to die. Something was up. When you go into combat you almost can tell who is going to make it and who isn’t. And I really thought I wasn’t going to make it back home to my wife again.
A lot of action was goingon at the time. For any of you out there that were in the military, I was one of those ‘shake and bake’ sergeants. I went through special training to be bumped up the ranks to platoon sergeant because so many sergeants were getting killed and wounded at that time in 1967-68. And we went on this battlefield operation on this village with a number of other platoons and I remember walking on the rice paddy. I couldn’t carry the machine gun ammunition, the M-16; my platoon was carrying it for me, carrying my weight. I was barely able to walk and as we were approaching the village I hear the thumping sound of mortars coming over head.
I heard someone yell – I don’t know what they said – the machine gun opened up, screaming and yelling “Gun fire!” and next thing I remember was falling face first into the water of the rice paddy. Two days later I woke up ina military hospital in Saigon, South Vietnam with tubes coming out all over me and a nurse came by and said “Sarge, you’ll be ok, someone will tell you what happened.” I had no idea what happened.
I had my legs. I couldn’t find any patches on my arms, although my left side was badly bruised from my shoulder all the way down to my legs. Other than that I felt ok, somewhat, a little bit better than I did previously. And then the doctors came in and told me I had diabetes. What had happened was I had diabetes while going to sick hall and they didn’t diagnose it, and during that battlefield operation I went into a diabetic coma.
I later found out while I was in Saigon – someone from my company came over to check on me – that they thought I was dead. Everybody in my platoon got killed and when the backup platoon came to do what’s called ‘sweep an area’ to get all of the casualties and dead, they thought I was dead and threw me in a body bag where I stayed for two days until a medic at base camp – Brian Leet is his name is and he lives in Cambridge, Minnesota; if anybody out there is from Minnesota please look up Brian Leet and his wife Karen – while he was unzippering body bags to put a toe tag in all the dead soldiers, he unzippered my bag, recognized I was a different color, felt a pulse, and with another combat medic picked me up and put me on a helicopter which evidently flew me to Saigon military hospital.
Looking back on the records and all of that it looks like I was in a body bag for two days before Brian opened the bag up. And still questions – Brian has the answer about why I am still alive but – it’s just amazing to me. Frankly, I shouldn’t even be here talking to you right now. Diabetes saved my life otherwise I would have been with the rest of my platoon.
Well, I had never heard the word diabetes before and from Saigon what they did was ship me to Japan where I spent two weeks trying to get my diabetes under control. I still had blurred vision a little bit, and was still feeling quite sick. After two weeks when they thought I was healthy enough they flew me to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania hospital where I stayed for the next six months.
In that two weeks of sick hall while on active duty in Vietnam, I had lost 67 lbs due to diabetes, that’s how dehydrated and how severe… I don’t even remember about my blood sugar, what they told me it was, because I never heard the word diabetes before. No one in my family had it. I just thought it was something where you give me a pill or a shot and I get back to duty. Next thing I know I am in Japan and getting ready to be shipped home.
Well, while at the VA hospital – actually it was a Navy hospital at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania – in rehabilitation I am taking 8, 10, 12 shots a day after they took the IV out. My average dosage of insulin was about 400, 600, 800 units a day of insulin. You’ve got to remember, we’re talking 1968 now. And back then we had U40, U80, U100 insulin, different types of insulin based on its strength. It started out with U40 and a little bit later they advanced on.
We used to have glass syringes that we had to boil, not these disposable needles and syringes. As a matter of fact, our needles back then – for those of you who have had diabetes for 35 years or longer you are probably laughing right now remembering all of this – but we used to have to sharpen our needles with an Emery board. It was barbaric how we took control.
They put me on a 700 calorie diet, figuring that would help me because they couldn’t control my blood sugars. That’s malnutrition, 700 calories. I remember them coming in one morning with these little boxes of cereal, dry cereal in a box, and I asked them “Where is the milk?” and they said “You have to put water in it if you want it wet.” That’s how many calories I was allowed. Half a slice of bread, toasted, dry. It was not much fun back then. That was when we had saccharin and all those sugar-free types of food products which I was rapidly introduced to.
My wife came to visit me in Valley Forge and we sat down with the doctor and I said “What’s going on? How does my life look?” He said “At best, you are lucky to have 20 years left to live.” So this is the prognosis I had with diabetes. They didn’t know that much about the disease back then, unlike today. Wow, the advancements they’re doing! That’s the main reason why I am still here, with diabetes, although a number of issues have cropped up since.
Within six months of diagnosis I already had neuropathy in my legs; I couldn’t feel my feet. And the doctors back then automatically said “Oh that’s part of diabetes. You’ve got diabetic neuropathy, peripheral neuropathy.” Later on another diagnosis came out and I’ll explain that in a second. So I get out and have blurred vision. I could drive ok but I just couldn’t see the road signs. So what they would do is prescribe glasses to me when probably I should have had some laser but they didn’t have laser surgery back then. So it was a completely different time.
Not only did I have diabetes, I have what is now called PTSD which was undiagnosed then. So I came back to a different world with a lot of anger and guilt. If you listen to Hadley’s seminar program, I’ve done a previous seminar on PTSD, depression and success. And you’ll get a little bit of feeling about the mental state I was in when I came back, including trying to commit suicide.
But my wife got pregnant pretty quickly so I guess I still had some good working parts, and because of our unborn child, who was a son and is still healthy today, I didn’t commit suicide. I seriously thought of it twice. More than think about it – actually prepared and planned how I was going to do it – and just seeing my wife pregnant and then our son when he was born is what prevented me from committing suicide. Much like you read about in the papers today with the veterans coming back.
You know, coming back and losing allof your platoon, not being able to finish your mission, the military training, all of this had to do with it. Anyway, I tried to get work and I got fired from my very first job, telling me that they are not going to have any needle-killing, baby-toting Vietnam veteran working for their company and fired me. I was a trainee at a Wall street firm at the time. And with that I started a business and now, 44 years later, I am still in business.
I’ve owned 23 businesses in those 44 years and of course with Hadley, I’m most excited about the Hadley entrepreneur program and the blinded veterans initiative which I hope you all will investigate and seriously look at. It’s an excitingprogram where I share my 44 years of being a blinded veteran with diabetes and having a number of other medical conditions, including being total blind like I am sure some of you are.
So anyway, a little bit more about the diabetes. Back then we didn’t have A1c blood tests and we didn’t have a glucose test meter in 1968-69. We used to test our blood sugars with a urine sample, which was so inaccurate. And I am still taking 6, 8, 10 shots a day and frankly, not in good control. My eyesight started getting worse but I continued in business no matter how sick I was and had a number of business failures, but at least business allowed me the freedom to take off when I was sick – actually close my business when I didn’t feel well – and I kept on moving forward.
By the way, all this time, I am considered totally disabled by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and never even knew. I never applied for benefits until 1977 when I had my first real big success, a multi-million dollar restaurant business. I’m legally blind at this time and other challenges – kidney disease – cropped up within five years. Impotency followed within five years. Within five years of diagnosis I was already getting the symptoms and complications of neuropathy, kidney disease, eyesight problems sooner than should be.
And then that word ‘agent orange’ came out. That was a defoliant used during the Vietnam War and in Korea too, that basically killed the leaves off of trees so that snipers couldn’t hide up in the trees. And then at our base camps they would spray agent orange around the perimeters of our base camps so it would kill all the grass and the enemy couldn’t sneak up through the tall elephant grass which surrounded many of the base camps. They couldn’t sneak up at night time and plant bombs, or snipers get closer to shoot us when we were walking around in the compound.
Diabetes, Type II diabetes, is one of the service connection disabilities for any veteran who served in the military, in Vietnam as well as those who served on certain ships, even though theymight not have touched land in Vietnam, if you served on a ship during the Vietnam conflict, which was offshore. The Veteran’s Administration has a ship’s list and I believe there are 160-some ships now in that list. You are entitled to service connection with your Type II diabetes.
I have Type I diabetes, and with the eyesight issues the laser – I had the early years of laser and my eyes didn’t react well to laser – after a laser treatment in 1984 I came out of that laser treatment totally blind. They later did a fluorescein test which checks your optic nerves and found out I had optic neuropathy also. I had leg neuropathy, peripheral neuropathy. Agent orange causes peripheral neuropathy, maybe that’s the reason I got it so early within six months of diagnosis of diabetes, not ten or twelve years later like so many others who have gotten leg neuropathy or numbness of the legs.
But my eyesight also had neuropathy and a lot of the eye doctors strongly say that I probably had optic neuropathy when I came back from Vietnam from spraying. That’s why I had the blurred vision. And with the diabetes retinopathy or diabetic retinopathy combined, that’s why I am total blind. I have had a number of laser treatments but the main issue in my eyesight loss is no blood in my optic nerves.