SEVENTY-four years' living with type 1 diabetes has not slowed John Wrench - a kid from Childers who went on to become a senior pharmacist at Royal Brisbane Hospital and a keen fund-raiser for the Anglican Bush Ministry fund.
Among 21,548 Queenslanders now living with type 1, John is an elder statesman and on the eve of National Diabetes Week (July 12-18), he has sage words of advice for country Queenslanders dealing with diabetes.
"You have to be prepared to take responsibility for the management of your own condition," John said.
"It is like having a brother you have to look after. You must know what you are doing. That means learning your subject, working to advance your own knowledge, and not listening to the folksy nonsense that gets around."
Diabetes is a serious lifelong condition. Of three main types of diabetes, the most common (type 2) affects 185,511 Queenslanders. Many more have the condition and don't yet know it.
Type 1 is different. An autoimmune response destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. To survive, people with type 1 diabetes must inject synthetic insulin multiple times every day.
In 1941, John Wrench was just a few weeks shy of his ninth birthday and living in Childers when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
"It was a country GP who picked up that what I had was diabetes," he said. "They carried me up to the hospital to start the insulin therapy. By that stage I was really about at the point of death."
Today, across Queensland, the advocacy group Diabetes Queensland, the state education department and independent schools conduct regular 'Diabetes Basics' training for teachers. The program helps teachers to understand and identify the prominent symptoms of diabetes and the measures they can take to support students living with it.
"Diabetes Australia is able to do so much for people now," John said. "As a diabetic I've survived since 1941. Can you imagine what it was like, being a child, growing up without a glucometer (blood glucose meter)? I quickly learnt a great deal about human physiology and nutrition."
But in Childers, in hospital, in the middle of World War II, John had a mentor to help him manage.
"It was the local Presbyterian minister, Jamie Caulfield, who was insulin dependent himself," John said. "He was a scientist at heart and understood so much about human physiology, nutrition and other things.
"He was there to support my GP and so I got off to a good start."
"This is what Diabetes Queensland does for people now," John added.
Although diabetes and its causes were already well known in the '40s and '50s, the synthetic insulin that is now such a key component in type 1 and some type 2 diabetes treatment, was still unknown.
Instead, beef and pig insulin was extracted and circulated to hospitals and pharmacies by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories outside Melbourne.
"We had great big 26 gauge needles," John said. "And the process of injecting a product from another species created the possibility of an allergic reaction.
"The whole thing - managing diabetes - was a hard game back then."
After recovering from the debilitating symptoms that came with the onset of diabetes and with his father, decorated WWI Major Clarence Wrench MC, fully committed to the war effort, John was relocated to country NSW. There he stayed with a relative, an orchardist at Kenthurst.
"It was just not possible in those days to know your blood sugar level without urine testing - and those tests were inadequate. They did not detect sugar concentrations at the necessary levels," he said.
Today, when you walk up to John's front door, you'll experience his passion for gardening and the hundreds of native plant species he grows, often in support of his favourite cause - the Anglican Bush Ministry fund.
John extols the benefits of bush food and has developed his own recipes, including homemade rainforest fruit drink (see recipe below). In the field of diabetes, he works hard to support Aboriginal people, who are a section of the community most at risk from the condition.
Every month, John is to be found at the Bush Ministry stall at Brisbane's Aspley Hypermarket, where his use of coffee waste in composting is creating a stir among keen gardeners.
As a scientist, pharmacist, writer, poet, philosopher, botanist and bush food enthusiast, John has his fingers in a lot of pies, but if you think his life sounds too busy, he quickly responds: "Yes, but the alternative would be unthinkable".
JOHN’S RAINFOREST FRUIT DRINK
MUCH of what is growing in John’s garden is edible bush food. One of his most popular recipes is his rainforest fruit drink, which is a delicious use of native fruit, whether collected fresh or from the freezer.
Ingredients:
500g of any native bush fruits you can get your hands on
(Davidsonia, native citrus, Syzygiums e.g. luehmannii)
1L of water
Sugar
Method:
1. Boil fruits and water over the stove for 15 minutes.
2. Strain the liquid into a jug. If you don’t plan to use the leftover fruit then push as much as you can through the strainer.
3. Add 11g of sugar for every 100ml of strained fluid.
4. Store in the fridge.
Serves 9
Nutrition information per 125mL serve:
Energy: 198kJ
Protein: 0.6g
Total fat: 0.1g
Carbohydrate: 20.5g
Sodium: 0mg
