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jaeleslie at 09:24am on 19/08/2003
jaeleslie at 09:24am on 19/08/2003Saddened, but I find I'm not surprised, that his disease progressed so quickly at the end. On the other hand I heard of the diagnosis of his diabetes back in June with great alarm. He had spent a week in hospital, which is serious business. When he phoned me, then, I found out more about it, that it had progressed beyond the stage that could be controlled without insulin.
If you don't know anyone with diabetes, you will. Diabetics have to take great care to eat a regular and controlled diet, and even so any unusual exertion (or ingestion) can plunge them into strange states of low (or high) blood sugar, that one such friend has described to me as suddenly losing 50 points of IQ. You can't just direct the diabetic to the fridge to have his orange juice, when he is staring blankly and non-responsively. He is not registering what you say. Even if you put it in his hand, he may not remember how to drink it. He will not remember where the phone is to call the emergency services. Someone else needs to be there.
Alcohol is metabolized as sugar, and plays hell with anyone's insulin levels. And to get back to Martin, his excessive drinking was common knowledge, and rather a joke at conventions. That joke is a bitter one to me, although I still drink my own share.
He was always charming and sweet and so personable, at conventions and parties. The degree of difficulty in his life was not particularly apparent to convention friends, who expect the con to shelter unusual behavior. But when I visited him at his Surbiton flat in 1998, it was a wreckage, and the drinking was quite a usual part of the bachelor squalor. A generous host, he had cleaned away all the takeaway litter before my visit. So I had to hang around a bit before I realized that he generally had to leave his flat to get himself fed. But he enjoyed fine food, and all
in all we had a delightful time after Novacon, touring London galleries, restaurants, and Hampton Court, across the river. I cleaned off all the smoke residue from his windows, and the view was lovely.
But I found he was far too careless of his own welfare, which I couldn't tolerate, and by the next year we had fallen out. At British cons and the Seattle Corflu he appeared increasingly dissipated. He ignored my well-meaning instructions, I backed off and cut my losses. We eased eventually into a more wary friendship. When he called in June for a long rambling talk, after the hospital, there was little else to do but talk. I already knew his long practiced method of keeping that slender youthful figure
was: Don't Eat.
Regular long-distance phone calls from concerned friends are not nearly enough to manage and support such a medical condition. Living alone is not recommended. He was such a wonderfully sociable person in company, maybe it would not appear to you that he lived such a solitary life as he did.
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other.
Take care.
If you don't know anyone with diabetes, you will. Diabetics have to take great care to eat a regular and controlled diet, and even so any unusual exertion (or ingestion) can plunge them into strange states of low (or high) blood sugar, that one such friend has described to me as suddenly losing 50 points of IQ. You can't just direct the diabetic to the fridge to have his orange juice, when he is staring blankly and non-responsively. He is not registering what you say. Even if you put it in his hand, he may not remember how to drink it. He will not remember where the phone is to call the emergency services. Someone else needs to be there.
Alcohol is metabolized as sugar, and plays hell with anyone's insulin levels. And to get back to Martin, his excessive drinking was common knowledge, and rather a joke at conventions. That joke is a bitter one to me, although I still drink my own share.
He was always charming and sweet and so personable, at conventions and parties. The degree of difficulty in his life was not particularly apparent to convention friends, who expect the con to shelter unusual behavior. But when I visited him at his Surbiton flat in 1998, it was a wreckage, and the drinking was quite a usual part of the bachelor squalor. A generous host, he had cleaned away all the takeaway litter before my visit. So I had to hang around a bit before I realized that he generally had to leave his flat to get himself fed. But he enjoyed fine food, and all
in all we had a delightful time after Novacon, touring London galleries, restaurants, and Hampton Court, across the river. I cleaned off all the smoke residue from his windows, and the view was lovely.
But I found he was far too careless of his own welfare, which I couldn't tolerate, and by the next year we had fallen out. At British cons and the Seattle Corflu he appeared increasingly dissipated. He ignored my well-meaning instructions, I backed off and cut my losses. We eased eventually into a more wary friendship. When he called in June for a long rambling talk, after the hospital, there was little else to do but talk. I already knew his long practiced method of keeping that slender youthful figure
was: Don't Eat.
Regular long-distance phone calls from concerned friends are not nearly enough to manage and support such a medical condition. Living alone is not recommended. He was such a wonderfully sociable person in company, maybe it would not appear to you that he lived such a solitary life as he did.
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of each other.
Take care.