Remember the story of the guy who died in the flood? A Red Cross boat had come by earlier when the water was above the window sills, but the fellow refused rescue saying, “The Lord will save me.” A second boat came when the water was to the eaves and the man was hanging from the gutters. But again he refused rescue. “The Lord will save me,” he declared. Scrambling onto his roof ahead of the ever-rising waters the man spied a helicopter heading his way. A rope was lowered from the copter, but the obstinate guy batted it away and shouted over the din of the rotors, “The Lord will save me.” Of course he drowned. He arrived at Heaven’s throne perplexed, hurt, angry, and dripping wet. “Why,” he shouted at God, “didn’t you save me?” “Give me a break,” sighed the Lord God Almighty. “I sent two boats and a helicopter.”
I am a diabetic, Type II. I flunked a health insurance examination in March 1995. That’s how I found out. Six months before, an annual health exam said I was as fit as I could be, for a man my age. (Doctors always add that part.) But somewhere on the inclined plane to forty-eight, my pancreas decided to malfunction and it stopped producing enough insulin to keep my blood sugar count within normal range. All of a sudden, my blood count was hitting the 400 mark. That’s somewhere just short of the point where you either go blind or tank out in a coma. A blood count of 80 to 120 an hour after eating is considered normal. I guess I was lucky. Of the nation’s diabetics, so estimates go, only about half have been diagnosed.
