A DIABETES MEMORIAL QUILT

Inspired by the recent untimely deaths of two young people ( four-year-old Caleb Lemaster and twenty-year-old Sarah Jane McNicholas), who lost the battle against a killer disease, this virtual quilt is to be a memorial to all who have died from diabetes and its complications.

According to the American Diabetes Association, "Diabetes is the fourth-leading cause of death by disease in the United States; this year more than 178,000 will die from the disease and its related complications." Another report, this one from the U.S.Center for Disease Control,  ranks  Diabetes as the seventh-leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 1995 but points out that Diabetes is "believed to be underreported on death certificates, both as a condition and as a cause of death." Therefore, while "Diabetes" might not be cited as "cause of death" on  the death certificates of all those listed on the quilt, each was diabetic and the disease in some way contributed to his or her death.

The names on this quilt represent an infinitesimal percentage of the people who have died  from a disease that should have been cured long ago.  Many more people will die from diabetes until we find a cure.

We must find a cure, now!!!!!!!

If you have friends or relatives who succumbed to diabetes and its devastating complications and you wish to add their names to the Quilt, please send me a private message through the guestbook on the home page. That way your email address can be displayed to me. Unfortunately the email address that appeared here previously no longer exists. It became a spam magnet for mean people.

 

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Many thanks to to Angela Chiffy whose CompuServe Diabetes Forum library file is the source for many of the names appearing on the Quilt and to Robin Harrison for her "design" suggestions.


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