Sweet & Sour

by Peter Corris

  I topped the course in Combined History and English Honours and was appointed to a Teaching Fellowship at Monash University. John Morgan, the lecturer in the subject I taught (British Constitutional History) and I got on extremely well. I admired him, copied his habit of rolling his own cigarettes, and enjoyed many a dry sherry with him in his room at the end of the day. Then, long before breathalysers, half the university staff would have taken to the roads 'over the limit'.

  John's wife, Trish, was from the Catholic squattocracy. She was dark, exotic-looking, very good company and a fine cook. Margaret and I often went to the Morgan's house for dinner, and on these occasions, I paid only lip service to diabetes, eating and drinking far too much and ignoring the urine test results. Or neglecting to test at all.

  Newly affluent, I frequently ate in Carlton's Italian and French restaurants with the same carelessness. It was traditional for the staff to drink at the Notting Hill Hotel with the older students and I was an enthusiastic participant. I had virtually given up sport, drove everywhere and got no regular exercise – I was embarking on a lifestyle totally inappropriate for a diabetic and one that would eventually cost me dearly.

  Daunting though my first try at lecturing at Monash was, it was nothing compared to a two-week bout of impotence I suffered during the year Margaret and I were engaged. The relationship was never tranquil; we quarrelled over various things and she several times called off the engagement, only to relent when I pleaded with her. Our lovemaking took place in the car, parked in deserted spots in the bitter Melbourne winter, and was increasingly unsatisfactory. Eventually I was in despair at being unable to perform and all my old fears resurfaced. I now know that anxiety about sexual performance stimulates the production of adrenalin, which constricts blood vessels and intensifies the problem. I knew nothing about such things then and felt that the bottom had dropped out of my world.

  Margaret was patient and sympathetic and we decided to book into a motel to see if more comfortable surroundings and the aid of a bottle of wine – and no time constraints – might help matters. In the early 1960s this was a fairly bold move and took some hide to pull off. The motel receptionist clearly did not believe that we were married, as I claimed, but didn't comment. The whole episode veered towards farce when the car wouldn't start and had to be pushed from the check-in area to the room. We laughed, I relaxed, and the experiment was successful.

  But the whole experience had damaged my new-found sexual confidence and I began to use alcohol to bolster what remained of it. This potentially dangerous strategy worked for quite some time.

  My sexual fragility was due mainly to overextended virginity as well as to inexperience and ignorance. Foreplay was inadequate and ineffective; I knew nothing about oral sex, lubricants, massage oil and all the other devices and techniques to stimulate and maintain arousal and sensitivity. It is possible that five years of poorly controlled diabetes had begun to damage my vascular system just as the Reader's Digest article had outlined, but I gave no thought to this, and did not seek medical advice. When I suffered impotence my reaction was to panic and doubt my masculinity.

  I got on well with Margaret's father, who for some reason called me 'Rooster', and who always had a bottle of Dietale in the fridge for me. Dietale was low-carbohydrate (but alcoholically full-strength) beer. It might have been possible to drink it judiciously and not disturb the 'control', but I was not judicious. I drank to excess – wine, beer and spirits – because I enjoyed the taste and the effect: a feeling of relaxation, an infusion of confidence, an antidote to shyness.

  Margaret and I were married early in 1965 and, after completing a Master's degree during my three years at Monash, I won a scholarship to study for a Doctorate at the Australian National University, in Canberra.

  After a gap of a few years, I consulted Dr Taft before leaving Melbourne. I did not tell him the truth about my way of life, but admitted that I was having difficulty with control, testing high and experiencing some hypos. He recommended that I change to two injections daily, mixing Semi-lente, a slowish-release insulin and Actrapid, a quick-acting variety, for the pre-breakfast dose, and Monotard, a slow-acting insulin, before the evening meal. This, an improvement on the old regimen, became my routine for almost the next 20 years.

  As far as my diabetes was concerned, the move to Canberra was a disaster. I lost contact with Dr Taft, who had exercised some restraint over me in Melbourne; there, I would 'clean up my act' at least for some time before my visits to him, and take care of myself for a while afterwards.

  In Canberra, I did not see an endocrinologist and my neglect of the disease grew worse. I became a heavy, regular drinker. Whereas previously I had periods of light drinking and days when I didn't drink at all, I now drank every day and often at lunch as well as after the day's work and on into the evening. Research scholars were eligible to become members of University House, a kind of residential college, where there was an excellent bar. I drank there often, usually beer and in excessive amounts, with Jim Davidson, the Professor of my department, Deryck Scarr, my supervisor, and others. One signed chits for drinks and my monthly bill read 'Bevs, Bevs, Bevs', and nothing else.

  I injected twice a day, followed the diet in a rough and ready fashion (making no allowance for the beer) and tested the urine irregularly. The distance to the university was short but I drove in my new Volkswagen. I smoked. My only exercise was an occasional game of tennis with Margaret and friends (invariably followed by drinking), and some swimming in summer: not nearly enough. At this time, when the blood sugar must have been far too high most of the time, serious damage was being done to blood vessels in various parts of my body. I should have known about this but didn't. I felt well and was capable of working long hours and playing for just as long.

  Margaret and I became friendly with several other couples living in the apartment block allocated for married students without children. We ate frequently in each others' flats, held parties and conducted marathon card and darts games. At that time you could buy spirits cheaply in two-litre flagons and we sometimes laid in quantities of gin, Tarax tonic water and lemons. We drank and smoked and threw darts from the afternoon into the evening and through to the early hours. It was great fun and I gave no thought to what the sweetened tonic water and hastily snatched meals could be doing to me.

  8Punishment in the Pacific

  My first impression was of a place so ramshackle, so poor, so unexpectedly filthy, that I began to understand the theory behind culture shock… The idea that this miserable-looking town could be regarded as a capital city seemed laughable… Why would anyone come here?

  Paul Theroux, on his first impressions of Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands. (The Happy Isles of Oceania p148.)

  Looking back, I should have asked Dr Taft to refer me to an endocrinologist: with the John Curtin School of Medical Research one of the major units of the University, there must certainly have been endocrinologists about. I should have located and joined a diabetic support group and kept abreast of developments in the treatment of the disease. I should not have smoked. I should have exercised regularly and kept strictly to my diet. Above all, I should have kept my alcohol consumption to a safe level.

  Now, when I do most of these things, it seems remarkable to me that I did none of them back then.

  There are no excuses for my neglect, but there are reasons, and one lies in the nature of diabetes itself.

  Unlike a physical disability, it is not apparent to others and it is possible to conceal it. Whereas the effects on schizophrenics and epileptics of not taking their medication are obvious, this is not the case with diabetes. Someone neglecting the disease as I did will not necessarily suffer hypoglycaemic attacks, which would cause comment and maybe intervention, but is more likely to have continual high blood sugar readings which have no behavioural consequences.

  If I had been less healthy, subject to illnesses or consulting doctors, I might have been advised to pay more attention to my cond
ition. But I was very 'healthy' and only remember seeing a doctor once in my student days in Canberra. Above all, I believe I was ashamed of being diabetic.

  The neglect was a way of denying it to myself and others. I showed that I could behave normally – that is, indulge in all the bad habits that undermine the health of Australian men. In my case, however, that undermining was rapid and serious.

  My ignorance of diabetes was inexcusable. In 1961, one of my lecturers, who was also a diabetic, gave me a copy of The Diabetic Life. If I had read it I would have learned enough to warn me of the dangers of my lifestyle.

  The book travelled with me to Canberra, but remained unopened.

  My subject of study was the Pacific islands labour trade, a mass movement of indentured labourers who came from the Melanesian islands to Queensland, Fiji, Samoa and other places, to work on plantations. I concentrated on the Solomon Islands and in 1968 spent three months in Queensland interviewing descendants of the labourers, popularly known as 'kanakas' and calling themselves South Sea Islanders.

  This involved travelling by rail, car and bus from town to town, and inevitably, much of my work was done in the pubs. We drank five-ounce 'ponies' (the beer got warm in bigger glasses), ate in cafes, restaurants and people's houses, and I only approximated to my diet. The work went well – I collected the information I needed – but my diabetic control was steadily slipping.

  The following year I spent six months in the Solomon Islands and Fiji interviewing survivors of the labour trade. Diabetes was a decided handicap as it was not always possible to eat meals at the regular times demanded by the insulin injections, and the physical effort involved in this work could vary from near exhaustion one day to total idleness the next. I suffered many hypos, quickly used up my barley sugar supply, and had to buy packets of CSR sugar from the village stores (little more than cupboards stocked with tobacco, sugar, rice and canned goods) to see me through.

  I tried to explain the condition to John, my local helper. He was a mission-educated youth, but the sight of the hypodermic terrified him and I dropped the subject.

  One of the best indications of the onset of a hypo was sweating. In the Solomons I sweated all the time and often failed to detect the early warning. I often woke on a hot, steamy morning in a stifling hut drenched in sweat. At other times, when staying in towns, government rest houses or on plantations, my sugar would have been high. Oscillation from low to high levels is a bad situation for diabetics, scarcely better than having no treatment at all.

  Mostly, I lived on yams, tinned fish, rice and bananas. Luckily, I have always liked bananas. Several times I ran out of fish and dined on boiled rice and tomato sauce. This isn't too bad once or twice, but palls pretty quickly.

  The most congenial missions were those of the Marist Catholics, where alcohol and tobacco were available. At one point, after a particularly arduous passage by land and canoe and with my supplies exhausted, I staggered into a mission only to find that it was a Seventh Day Adventist hospital. Admirable, of course, but there was no tobacco to be had, no alcohol, and the evening meal I was so generously invited to share was based upon the soybean nut cutlet. I left the following day.

  Usually, I travelled by government launch but sometimes by copra boat as a deck passenger, as there were no cabins. I returned in this from Ysabel in the north to Guadalcanal, through a storm so severe that all the deck passengers had to lash themselves together and to stanchions mounted on the deck. In reasonable conditions I was a good sailor, but this time we spent 12 hours amid the copra sacks in wringing-wet misery. I vomited almost continually and could neither eat nor take my insulin. I lost 10 pounds on the passage and could scarcely walk. My biochemistry must have been in a mess at the end of it.

  Towards the end of my time in the Solomons, I made a trip to Marau Sound, no great distance from Honiara, to collect stories about an attack on a labour ship. A local planter put me up. He was like a Somerset Maugham character – totally hospitable, and immensely overweight to the point of immobility. Each morning he sat on the verandah drinking beer – he worked his way through most of a case in the daylight hours – and gave orders on the day's operations to his 'boss-boy'. For the rest of the day he drank, read paperback thrillers and slept.

  I always travelled with a selection of paperbacks, mostly mysteries bought in Honiara, and the planter and I had a lively exchange of views on the various writers and the books themselves. I did my interviews and then had a few days to wait for a boat back to the capital.

  I walked around the plantation (which provided the model for any subsequent writing I did on life in the tropics) and swam off the shingly beach. One day I happened to be wearing thongs instead of the usual sandshoes, and cut my foot on a piece of coral. I thought nothing of it and the cut rapidly became infected. I was feverish within 24 hours and a red line ran up my leg towards my groin from the swollen foot. The planter had no antibiotics and a severe infection plays havoc with sugar levels, the liver secreting glucose to enable the body to cope with the assault. To make matters worse, a storm blew up and the boat I was expecting to catch was delayed.

  In one of the most frightening episodes in my life, I lay in bed and heard the planter receive instructions over the radio about how to anaesthetise me and amputate my leg to prevent my dying from gangrene. I was feverish and weak and couldn't have prevented this happening. Fortunately, the boat arrived and took me immediately to the hospital in Honiara. I received a massive – and very painful – injection of penicillin and was out of danger within a day. I sent the planter, who had spent hours at the radio monitoring the boat's progress and offering me encouragement, a bottle of the best Scotch whisky in the Burns Philp store.

  9Warning signs

  warn: to tell or signal to a person that something, usually bad, is going to or may happen…

  The Pocket Macquarie Dictionary

  I completed the fieldwork without further mishap and returned to Canberra to write the thesis. Margaret had gone with me to the Solomons but had found the climate and conditions too trying and hadn't stayed. Our relationship had always been fragile and, now, after being apart for six months, it collapsed. She returned to Melbourne and I coped with my distress by working feverishly.

  In 1969-70 I probably did more damage to my health than at any time before or since. I completed a draft of the thesis in six weeks and had almost a whole year to polish it. I submitted it to my supervisor in sections, pretending that I was working steadily; in fact, I was playing. With time on my hands, no responsibilities and sufficient money, I enjoyed myself.

  I had a series of relationships with women around the university, went to parties, drank with other students and staff and visited Sydney for more of the same.

  A very distressing episode of impotence around the middle of the year should have rung alarm bells. I saw a doctor who prescribed a mild sedative, I slept deeply for 24 hours and had no further sexual problem. Surely it was the responsibility of this doctor, confronted with a diabetic experiencing impotence, to question him closely about his control and insist on blood tests? Why didn't this happen? I doubt that I can blame the doctor – I probably didn't tell him I was a diabetic.

  I was awarded the PhD and won an Australian National University Travelling Postdoctoral Fellowship. This provided enough money to enable me to travel overseas and pursue further research. The only requirement was that I submit a short report upon my return regarding the work I'd done. I planned to continue studying Pacific History in British archives, visit friends and other academics in Europe and the United States and do more research in Fiji.

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  Before leaving I had a brief time in Sydney where I conducted two sexual relationships, not very successfully. I had inherited a couple of thousand dollars from my uncle Philip (the one who'd taken me to the boxing) and spent a good deal of it on Quelltaler hock and at places like the superb Spanish restaurant, Costa Brava, and at the Newport Hotel where
I passed on Sundays as a bona fide traveller.

  I had short stopovers in India and Russia on the way to the UK. My passport photo from the time shows a typical hippie – shoulder length hair, beard, and an army disposal shirt.

  After an interminable wait at the departure gate at Moscow airport, I presented my travel documents and duffel bag. The beard and the long hair were suspect and my bag was searched. The official found my syringe and needles and I was escorted to a small room, made to wait and was then questioned by someone who had virtually no English. The plane was due to take off soon and I dreaded missing it; I had already had more than enough of Russia. I regretted not carrying my diabetic card and found it impossible to convey the reason for the hypodermic. The bland, grey Russian faces were intimidating, and the number of uniformed pistol-packers wandering about didn't help. Eventually an English-speaker was located. I explained things to her and was allowed to leave.

  While in England I began to keep a diary, but there is virtually no mention of diabetes in it. One entry recounts meeting up with John Morgan, then on sabbatical leave, and his family for lunch in a Guildford pub. I sat down to one of my favourite English meals – liver with onions, mashed potatoes, and Yorkshire pudding washed down with two pints of draught Guinness stout. The only reason I recorded what I ate was my amusement at John's comment.

  'Eating that much iron, Corris, you'll rust from the inside out.'

  More to the point, the carbohydrate content of the meal would have far exceeded my allowed six portions. If I tested my urine at all at this time, I did it irregularly. I also took not much notice of the results.