One in 10 Americans has diabetes. That's more than 30 million people at risk of blindness, kidney disease, and even death. Here at KENS 5, it has affected one of our own.
"I met Dustin Gray close to 12 years ago while working in Little Rock, Arkansas," said KENS 5 reporter and meteorologist Jeremy Baker. "Dustin loved baseball, that was his big thing. He loved the Cardinals."
Dustin also loved cruises. Jeremy and Dustin went on a cruise every year with the same group of people. It was like a reunion. But about five years ago, his health started to change from drinking excessive alcohol.
"He got pancreatitis for the first time. That went away. He was better but didn't change his habits, so he got pancreatitis again. It went away. But then it got much worse with hepatitis," Baker said.
Eventually, they found out that he was a Type 2 diabetic.
"Pancreatitis makes it almost impossible to treat a patient with diabetes without insulin,” said Dr. Eugenio Cersosimo from the Texas Diabetes Institute.
"I do Real Men Wear Gowns. We talk about diabetes all the time. When we first moved here, I didn't take diabetes seriously," Baker said.
When your liver isn't working properly, it's hard to control your blood sugar. Eventually, Dustin got a sensor on his abdomen that measured his blood sugar. A smartphone app would alert both he and Baker if it went too high or low. The night of January 19, that's exactly what happened.
"It dropped pretty quickly,” Baker recalled. “By 3 a.m., it was down to that dangerous level."
"That was the form by which this individual did not recognize the low blood sugar, what was going in a direction irreversibly so,” Dr. Cersosimo added.
"I saw the reading on the app, which stopped reporting at 6 a.m., so I got up and went into his bedroom,” Baker said. “What I saw was something I’ll never forget. I patted him on the cheek and said, ‘wake up.’ But when I did that, he was so cold. And then I felt for his heart. I didn't find a heartbeat"
EMS came and they told Baker that he had been gone for a few hours.
"It was horrible. It was like my whole world just crashed and I didn't know what I was going to do,” Baker said. “I'm telling the story today because diabetes and your health has to be taken seriously. He didn't take it seriously enough. I didn't take it seriously enough. And by the time we both realized how serious this was, it was too late.”