To the editor:
Kudos to Andrew Farquhar for his right-on-the-mark column in Capital News July 13, (Diabetes Remains A Frustrating, Unpredictable Disease).
This gentleman is shining a light on the misery that people inflict on diabetes sufferers in Canada and elsewhere. And I can take this further.
I am a disabled person apart from having diabetes. I am tired of doctors and specialists accusing me of not being proactive in my fight to enjoy a comparatively normal life in the face of this horrible assault, both from the disease itself and from the medical community who, it seems to me, have only exacerbated the situation.
I exercise to the best of my ability, watch my diet and take what medications I can afford.
I cannot do more.
Yet I have either been pilloried or ignored by some in the medical profession, who offer drugs that I cannot pay for, or drugs with terrible side effects. When I don’t adhere to their ridiculous demands I am accused of not doing enough.
Well, I have decided that if I have a shorter life, at least it will be a happier life than the supposed long one envisioned by medical so-called “specialists”—a future life of trying to financially support and tolerate their drugs and their awful side effects as they try and guinea pig me with their latest toxic brew.
It has become obvious to me that, due to lack of political will or even medical will, that there is no interest in genuinely trying for a cure for diabetes. Not while the pharmaceutical companies and the arbiters of Western medicine are making so much money off their latest drug maintenance holy grails.
Laurence D.M. Marshall
Kelowna
