Wow, that’s another story! (laughs) I knew his sisters, his mother. He was living in [the city of] Anápolis and his sister said, “When you get to [the State of] Bahia, you’re going to marry our Isabel”.
We were “comadres” [I was the godmother of her child]. “You marry Isabel because she’s a beautiful girl, a very nice person, you marry her! ”.
And he said, “Marry Isabel? Not at all, I don’t even know this Isabel”. When he got there and saw me, well, maybe he liked what he saw (laughs), But I didn’t even know him.
We did not date, we did not know each other, we never went out together, and we’re living together until today (laughs). I was born in [the State of] Bahia, I got married in Bahia. Then I went to [the State of] São Paulo, from São Paulo I went back to Bahia.
From Bahia I came to [the capital of] Brasília. And I am here until today. I have been here for more than 40 years.
And I like it here. I went from [the State of] Piauí in 1970 to [the city of] Riachão das Neves [in the State of Bahia]. I stayed and lived there.
Then, I came to Brasília, I think it was 1975. I started working as a house maid. I took care of a young girl, working as a babysitter.
I was also a housecleaner, I did everything that made honest money (laughs). I used to live in a tiny one-room house, very tight, over in [the neighborhood of] Ceilândia Norte. It was really hard for me.
That was the last house I lived on rent, that was it. Girl, when I moved to this [neighborhood of] Guariroba, there was no water, there were no stores, water was only distributed by the water truck over there at the corner. Or we had to go get water in the police headquarters.
Afterwards, they installed running water, they put public water. And slowly this all improved. Today, it’s a great place!
I’m a samba person, I’m so fanatic…No, I’m not fanatic. Here in Brasília I am from ARUC [United of Cruzeiro Recreational Association] and I have the shirts, even when I am not in the Carnival, all the shirts you can imagine! This one is from 2011.
This one, I think, is from this year. I have all of them, even if I march or not for ARUC, I have all of them, except some that I have already donated. Here I have them.
Here are some more hanging in the closet. I went from [the State of] Piauí in 1970 to [the city of] Riachão das Neves [in the State of Bahia]. I stayed and lived there.
Then, I came to Brasília, I think it was 1975. And since 75, it has been this battle with illness. One night, he didn’t feel well.
He woke up without his breath. So we scheduled a cardiologist for him and took him to the doctor. And the doctor requested a bunch of exams and said that is [blood] pressure was very high and that we had to be very cautious and that he could not drink anymore because if he died it would be bad, but if he got stuck in a wheelchair, it would be even worse.
So we did all his exams, the doctor prescribed him some medicine, told him not to drink anymore. He took the pressure medicine for a year. And [the blood pressure] was under control.
But then he started drinking again, and the pressure started to go up again. And he didn’t go back to the doctor. That was when he bought the bus and went back to Riachão das Neves to work.
He was ill, and he knew it. He had several strokes there and became forgetful. By himself, he noted that he was ill and had to come back.
When he noticed he could no longer work, he sold the bus and came back home. When he arrived, the struggle begun. When I would start to cook something in this kitchen I would put the food on the stove and come over here to sit a bit, my legs ached so much.
It was so much pain in my legs! But it wasn’t a violent pain, it was pain with tiresome. When I finished cooking, I would come over to this living room, I would do everything very quickly so I would have time.
I think I wouldn’t be able to continue standing up. I would lay down here and sometimes I would sleep. Then I went over to the healthcare center and got tested, understand?
I left my telephone and all, but I moved and when they looked for me, they did not find me. In 2001, my nephew died and I went over to the Central Hospital [Hospital de Base] to get his cadaverous report, in the anatomy department. When I left, between the Central Hospital and the Sarah [Kubistchek] Hospital, I had kind of a vertigo, not to the point of fainting.
But I couldn’t walk anymore. I started sweating and trembling. [This nephew], he was to me as a son, he lived with me since he was little.
Besides that, my sister had cancer and I didn’t worry about me. I was only worried about her. So, I was there and this lady came along and asked me, “Are you diabetic?
” And there were a lot of people around me. And I said, “Not that I know of”. And the exam results were still at the healthcare center".
“Not that I know of”. And she said, “I’ll give you this candy. If you eat this and if it ends your sweating, you go over to the healthcare center”.
Because she was diabetic. Look, it was in a second, Soraya! I got better!
And I went to the center to see my results. When I got there, it was 385 when I had done the exam back then! Any diabetic has to eat every three hours.
Any person that has diabetes, the doctor said so. You have to eat every three hours. Just like a baby that nurses on the bottle (laughs).
You have to drink a glass of juice, eat something. Diabetic people, according to the doctors, should have a normal meal in the morning; in three hours, eat some fruit; have lunch at noon; around three o’clock eat again: at six have a snack or eat dinner; and before going to bed, he should have a last meal. I disagree.
Not every Brazilian has the means to have breakfast, have a snack at 10am, lunch at noon, and another snack at 3pm, dinner and a last snack before sleeping! Skip a meal of a diabetic? Not always [it is bad].
If she is under control, you can move forward on the first [meal skipped]. But on the second meal [skipped], she will send you a message. You only skip meals if you want to.
She comes with those horrible symptoms, it goes into your brain, your sight, it uneases you. You only need to eat to feel better. Cleaning day, for example.
I start to move around this little old shack, it is small, but I like to clean and straight it out. I clean here, clean there and then I forget to have a meal. At the exact time, she calls out.
It is just like a cell phone message (laughs). And I say, “Ok, I know, she wants to eat” (laughs). I think to myself.
She wants to eat. I eat and … All this I have learned to get along. Sometimes, I eat just a cracker with some sugar, a glass of water and I go to bed.
Do you believe that? Saying it like this, nobody will believe me: How does a sick person eat this and get better? But it’s because your body is only asking for sugar, nothing else.
Only sugar and if you send in some sugar, there, she goes up again. Lunch, dinner? The main meal is breakfast, the first meal of the day.
When my wife is not looking, I go over to the kitchen and fry an egg, some bacon. For a diabetic, this is poison. But… The day I do this, I go out for a walk to burn everything I ate.
But I ate it! In [the touristic city of] Caldas Novas, I got messed up. I almost died !
I ate codfish patties with my friends. It happened like this: Many nice people, girls, boys, everybody young. And we got there and they said, “Let’s eat this, let’s go to the snack bar, let’s have a snack!
” And we got together around the table, everybody together, one would say, “I want this”, and the other, “I want that”. And I said, “I’m not going to eat because I’m a diabetic”. And they said, “No, don’t worry, it’ll be only once”.
And I’m crazy with codfish patties! And a big dish came out, and they put more, and they brought more, and let’s eat, and let’s eat more. Some ate it with beer; other’s didn’t because we are religious.
And I had mine with a bit of orange juice, I think I ate two or three [patties]. My dear! I was able to come back home, I didn’t feel bad during the trip, but when I got home, my family knows what happened, and also neighbor next door can prove it, I would walk around and it didn’t feel like me.
She was angry. The doctor from my son’s police corporation gave me two insulin shots, because when I I was still not well, and that was it. This is what happened.
My daughter-in-law gave me some country chicken eggs. I put them in the refrigerator but they fell to the floor when I was getting something out of the fridge. And I thought, “Oh no, the eggs are going to spoil and I won’t be able to make my pudding”.
So I got the three eggs, got what was left and made my pudding. So then I ate it, I ate all that I wished for, but I only ate the pudding, I didn’t eat anything else. I spent a good lot of days with no sugar, without eating anything that could sum up with that sweetness of the pudding.
I only ate the pudding, nothing more. Food, he eats everything. But, it has to be nonfattening food, little salt, more vegetables.
But he has no limit to eat. If you leave it when you go out, you leave it, when you come back, if you leave a cookie jar over there, he will have eaten almost all of it, you know. If I buy some raw brown sugar, I cut up some pieces and put them there, and I store the rest.
This is how I have been doing it, controlling it. The wife makes the husband. Depending on how she does it bit by bit, she is able to make him the way she wants him to be .
And I do that. So today he [her husband] takes to work all the food that I eat. I cook my food.
One food only. He doesn’t even know, he doesn’t even notice. He doesn’t even notice that I changed the cooking oil, he doesn’t even notice that I reduced the salt, he doesn’t even notice he is taking brown rice to work.
In the beginning, I would mix white rice with brown rice, I would mix them up. And he would say, “Why is one rice dark and the other one white? ”.
I would say, “No, it’s because I used Knorr instant chicken broth cubes and it became like that”. When she [blood pressure] is uncontrolled, I separate my part, I cook the beans with less salt, or I make my rice, I always eat brown rice, and I cook my rice separated, with no salt, and I put little salt in the rest of the food, and eat. When she is well, I eat normal, not salty, because my food has very little salt, for everybody.
So, I don’t eat separated, only when I am in a crisis, when I see she is high, and then I eat separate. Sometimes you are scolded, “Pay attention to you cigarettes! You are drinking!
”. I have a neighbor here, a lady, if she comes by my house, she will say, “You already have another cigarette in your hand! You can’t do that!
”. The other day, I was having a barbecue here. She came over.
I had a sausage; I buy two kinds of sausages, a spicy one for those you like pepper, and one without it. I don’t like pepper… Pepper, for me, is in a black bean stew and other food. And I got a piece of the sausage and she scolded me!
She said I couldn’t eat the spicy sausage! I almost reacted badly to her, I just said, “Listen, I’m in my own home, I’m the one doing the barbecue, and you still want to control me in my house? ”.
I said, “Look, I eat what I want, you know that”. She took it all right and left. Chica [his wife] said to her, “Be careful, he’s going to snap back on you”.
I was going to say to her, “Hey, listen, this is my house, not yours”. And the [doctor] said, “From now on, your life is over". It is over meaning not doing certain things that I used to do.
On the first day, I was kind of so so, I got home and started researching online the diabetic diffusion around your body. Somethings, in my view, I consider as myth. So, on the first day, I was so and so and did the research.
On the next day, I went out and bought a box of needles to measure [the blood glycaemia]. I exaggerated because I should have bought little ones. If you use it, only you, you can use them three of four times, and you don’t measure every day, but in three in three days.
And I bought a box with 200 needles, and if I used two of them, they were the ones I gaveover to the neighbor. I have never pierced my finger. I don’t really like to pierce myself.
I’m not going to measure myself, just to receive bad news? I am not going to measure myself. But then at the next meal, there I am [piercing myself].
If you are ok, you are satisfied. If not, you have to take away from your diet. It is slower.
I believe that if you change the dosage, she [diabetes] goes down quicker. But the bulk is still there, what difference does it make if you take dose of insulin? I measure away from them.
I go over to my room, close the door, sit down and measure my pressure. And if one of them comes in, he says, “Oh, you’re measuring again! You’re doing it again”.
And I say, “Stop, if I am measuring it, it is because I feel that she isn’t well”. They think I measure the [blood] pressure all the time. It’s not that I measure it all the time, I say, “I know, I need to see, if she is not well, I have to take my pill to control her.
If she’s ok, I won’t be worried, I won’t take my medicine”. In the morning, he takes four pills for his pressure. At noon, he takes aspirin.
At night, around 7pm, he takes another one. Then, between 8:30-9pm, he takes the sleeping pill. And then he says to me, “You’re going to poison me with all this medicine" "You’re giving me too much medicine”.
But I am giving according to what the doctor said, according to what is written down on the prescription. I give it correctly. I do what I can.
My daughter. In the beginning, she started controlling me. She knew, if there are 60 pills, tomorrow there should be 59.
And I didn’t know she was watching me. I spent two days without taking the pills and she scolded me! And I said, “I did take the pills”.
And she replied, “Liar! I counted the pills and they were the same yesterday”. Oh, ok, so today I’ll deceive her.
So now when I don’t want to take it, I just take out the pill and throw it away. Now she stopped doing that. But I was taking the pill out of the box and putting it into my pocket.
I wasn’t taking it. And then he said, “You’re not taking the medicine right" "Not the way I taught you". "It has to finish up.
On the day you come get some more, the one I gave you before should have ended”. If I say that there is medicine left from last month, he will say, “Oh, that is because you didn’t take it". "You must have a lot at home with no use”.
They know! They know everything through the computer. [He says] “We teach you how to use the medicine, we prescribe it, but patients don’t use it the way we say so.
Then, they come in here complaining”. That’s what he says. But I use it the way he told me to.
See, the first medicine they gave me was a pill this size. It gave me a diarrhea! And he said, “Yes, some folks are like that.
" "They get used to the medicine and then they don’t have that anymore”. But in my case… I had been on it for almost a year, and I wouldn’t get better. Sometimes I would not go out in fear of the diarrhea.
So I went back to his office and told him this and he changed the prescription. He changed to another one, a tiny pill. And this one was not good for me either.
It would give me a dizzy spell, and sleepiness. And I would go back and he would say, “Ok, it’s the third time you come to an appointment and say that the medicine isn’t working". "The only way is to put you on insulin”.
They put us on insulin only as the last option. And I would think, “I have to go every day to the health center to prick me? ” And she [the doctor] said, “No, they will teach you the way to apply it”.
And I said, “Oh, doctor, I am not able to prick myself”. I told her, “I can’t do this”. And she said, “Yes, you can do it.
Bit by bit, you’ll get a hand of it". So I went twice to the health center for the nurses to apply [the insulin]. On the second time, she suggested that I do it myself.
So I started doing it and noticed it was better when I did it instead of other people. They say the word “never” is so heavy, right? I said to her, “I will never be able to do it, doctor".
“I will never be able". She said, “Yes, you will, you will”. Today, she’s mad.
I say, today, she’s in a way that nobody will stand her. You feel the symptoms. Only who feels them knows what I’m talking about.
But she comes, it’s like if she gathers your brains in a tiny tiny ball, right in the middle of your head. I told you she was angry? You know what changed?
When you go to a wedding, I don’t eat the food anymore. I go to a christening, I don’t eat those things anymore, so just to go and be there, I just end up not going. This afternoon, there’s supposed to be a baby shower over there in Setor “O” [close by neighborhood].
The boys are preparing the car to go. I don’t even know if I’m going. I almost don’t go to parties anymore.
Sometimes that’s how I justify. If I go, I get there and will have to say, “I can’t eat this”. Or I look around and there is nothing I can eat.
Sometimes that is why I don’t go. For example, a party at night, I usually don’t go because one thing that doesn’t work well with her is sleepiness. Spend a whole night awake?
I never did that again, no way. If I spend a whole night awake, the next day, I’m worthless. It seems that my blood doesn’t circulate.
It is horrible. It isn’t a hangover, it’s a very strange thing. He knows many people, but they all distanced themselves.
Some were younger and liked to party, liked to drink, and today he can’t drink anymore. So, when a person gets ill, other people don’t stay around. Before, I would leave the samba at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and I would get home around 6am.
Today, I get here at 10 or 11pm. I would get there and, first thing, I’d drink a caipirinha [lemon, sugar and cachaça drink], talk with one here, fool around with the girls there. And today?
Today, I go there mainly to socialize. I have fun, eat some feijoada [black beans and pork stew], but I don’t fill up my plate, I just eat a little bit, so no one will say I didn’t eat it. At 3 or 4pm, I’m home already.
Before? I would leave the party ready for the next one. “Come on, let’s go!
”. We would gather three or four, gather the girls and would disappear. Today, when the feijoada is over, 3 or 4pm I’m home already.
Even my wife finds that strange. So, many people avoid going out due to all this. Not me!
I go out as usual, I continue doing what I always did, but not with the same relationships I used to have. Today, I narrowed it down 85%, not even 90%. Maybe in a year, I will have gone down to 100%, but meanwhile I continue doing the same things.
I fool around with the girls, I hug and kiss them, I say, “Today, it’s my turn! ”. I’m just the same.
But you know you’re lying. You’re just saying that to keep your ego high up. But you are just not able anymore.
If I get upset with something, that’s all it takes. If I get nervous. Let’s say, a relative dies or a neighbor dies, just like one died last week here.
And I say, “Oh, she died, she was my friend, my neighbor, somebody I liked and considered, a nice fellow”. So, I’m in shock. With that, I feel my heart beating faster, it doesn’t leave my mind, and in a little while, if I measure it, my pressure is high.
It is the tension. If something happens, if I watch a movie on TV, I don’t really like to see the news, they only talk about death and the like. It gives me a bad feeling and I leave.
If I see it for a long time, it will give me that tension, that tension, and my [blood] pressure goes up, it goes out of control. Everybody he knew, they come by, they talk and all. But he doesn’t recognize many of them.
He gets nervous. Sometimes, he irritates himself with anything that happens. There’s Mr Antonio over there, a man that talks to him over there.
But sometimes, they are talking and Mr Antonio may say something that he dislikes, and he comes home suspicious with the neighbor. Then he spends a month or two without going there. And then, suddenly, he goes there again.
And the doctor said, “You explain to your neighbors so they won’t get upset with him, or won’t make him more nervous, because he has high blood pressure, if he discusses with them, it will be worse for him”. When one has diabetes, if you get nervous, the diabetes goes up. I remember a day I got home, it was around the day I discovered I had diabetes.
My sister had gone out and taken the key. And I arrived and couldn’t get in. And I got so nervous, so nervous that I bent this fence down.
You can look over there, the fence is still bent. And Mr. Maria, my neighbor, called me over to her house, gave me some water.
Then, when I checked, my diabetes was really high. I used to live in my sister-in-law’s house. She had a neighbor.
And she said, “D. Isabel, that problem is due to menopause". "That is a nerve problem, you get too nervous”.
And I said, “Do you think so, Celia? ”. And she said, “Yes, I do think so".
"I’m going to teach you about a medicine". "I should not even teach about it". "But I’m going to teach you how to use it because it really worked for me and I know that if you take one pill you will get better".
"Take a pill of Lexotan [psychiatric drug], a 3mg pill that is very mild". Take it, try it and see how you’ll get better from this nervousness of yours, this nervous system”. She gave it to me, I took the pill.
I don’t quite remember if she gave it to me or if I bought it… I think I did not buy it, I think she gave it to me because I didn’t have a prescription. I know that I took the pill. I got so much better, it took away that tension, that suffocation feeling, that thing that was bothering me so much.
I got much, much better. Sometimes, doctors don’t want to prescribe it. But I said, “Doctor, I feel so much better with this medicine".
“With other ones, sometimes I don’t feel better. But with this one, I feel really well”. I take it, I take Fluoxetina [psychiatric drug].
I forgot to tell you. I take it together with the insulin. In order to get the insulin down, it has to be helped out by the Fluoxetina.
I forgot to explain this to you. Fluoxetina takes away the stress. She’s the one that lowers my stress, my nervous system She’s the one that lowers it down.
When I wasn’t feeling well, I would run over to the São Francisco hospital. They would give me medicine, and when I was feeling better, I would go back home. Sometimes, they would say, “No, it’s not your blood pressure".
"Your pressure is not high. You have an emotional lack of control”. So, all this was emotional lack of control.
I am much better nowadays, but I have this until today. Sometimes, she still attacks me. And I know how it goes: I take my pressure medicine, and she doesn’t go down.
The time is over for her to go down, but she is still not under control, she’s the same way. So I take the prescription drug and then she’s under control. So, all this is an emotional thing.
They [nurses] tell us that we should have a quiet life. And that’s impossible, as we know. Quiet?
Something always happens. But they say, “If we are super happy, very happy, thrilled, radiant, she goes up". "If you are really low, down and sad, she goes up”.
They say the emotional systems rises her more than if we eat sugar and the like. So diabetes will take over if you let yourself get low. “I’m not going to eat this because it harms the diabetes, because it has sugar”.
And you still want to eat it. Not me! I said, this illness doesn’t dominate me, I dominate this disease.
I dominate diabetes, not she dominates me. One needs to have lots of patience and lots of faith in God. To struggle with a sick person is not easy.
It’s not easy. And with a long disease, it is not easy. Not easy.
Only God. Only God to give us a lot of strength and wisdom. I ask God to give a lot of strength and a lot of wisdom because some days I am frail, some days I cry, I get nervous, but what can I do?
When they tell me someone with diabetes has died, I’m impacted for many days. I get worried. I pray, I ask for God and continue life again.
This is how we should do it or else… If you tumble, it is even worse. Some struggle against diabetes, “I don’t want it. I don’t know.
I’m not a diabetic". "I’m not going to take care of it. I’m not going to eat this or that”.
In that way, you only get worse. All that she wants is you fragile. Sometimes, we leave reality, we start thinking, we get sad, but we can face it.
