Diabetes hero
Late songwriter Jason Bartlett has left an important message about living your best life
“There is no future. At a young, early age I’m going. 36 years of age and I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.”
Nine days before dying from complications of diabetes and obesity, songwriter and former Australian Idol contestant Jason Bartlett recorded his diabetes story – ‘Passing on Wisdom’ – from his Royal Perth Hospital bed, urging the next generation of Australians, especially men, to look after themselves, so they can be there for their loved ones as long as possible.
“No one wants to be here in this bed,” says Jason. “It’s not a life that I recommend for anyone. So I say to everybody to look after themselves, rethink alcohol, rethink drug use.”
Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the age of 19,
Jason blamed a combination of a lack of health education and ignoring the danger signs that gradually lead to a tragic sequence of chronic conditions, leaving him blind and unable to walk.
“What [diabetes has] done to my body and my whole health – just deteriorated it,” he says. “Basically, grabbed it and squashed it like a can.”
As a young adult, Jason was in “party state”, having a drink at the parties he attended. The federal government’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework (2014) reported Indigenous Australians were hospitalised for acute intoxication at 11 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians, and at five times the rate for alcoholic liver disease.
As Jason continued to party and drink heavily, his kidneys began to fail, slowly. “Kidney disease associated with diabetes is much more prevalent [more than 10 times greater] in Indigenous populations,” says Associate Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Neale Cohen at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. He says the key factor in Indigenous communities leading to higher complication rates is the poor control of diabetes.
Once Jason’s kidneys failed, his eyesight began to deteriorate due to glaucoma. “And when that happened, I had to make sure that I started doing things right,” he says.
“It was a big slap in the face when it took my vision.”
At the time, he was still walking, but when the foot ulcers began – and it came to a point they were not going away – he was no longer allowed to walk, making it harder for Jason and wife Jaimee to get around.
Before his health issues,
Jason was looking at a bright
“It hit me like a railway train because I didn’t look after what I was supposed to look after.”
future. “In 2009, Jason made it through to the top 24 on [reality television show] Australian Idol,” says his cousin, Federal Minister for Indigenous Health Ken Wyatt. “[He] continued his career after the show, writing, recording and performing with the popular Bartlett Brothers band”. Becoming known as the Indigenous rock band from Perth which created music that not only touched the heart but also lifted the spirit, the brothers were ready to launch themselves into Sydney’s music scene. “We lost Jason shortly after he made the brave but agonising decision to cease dialysis,” the Minister says.
Mr Wyatt explains Jason’s dream was to change the world for the better. Although this was originally through his music, his wish changed to simply wanting to get the health message out.
“Jason strongly but humbly tells it like it is,” says Mr Wyatt. “There is no self-pity, just heartfelt statements of fact that apply to all Australians. If his video can help just one person to make life-changing choices, Australia will be better for it.”
Making good, healthy decisions when he was younger could have saved Jason’s life, but unfortunately, his insight came too late. “If I could go back in time and do something differently, I would never, ever have touched the bottle,” says Jason. “Never, ever would have drunk alcohol.
“Why can’t we just go and have a barbecue with the kids, down at the beach, or go to the river and just throw a line in, and spend time together that way, you know?” he asks in his video.
“We need to look at life without alcohol, without drugs, because if we don’t start doing it now then the next generations to come, they might as well be dead.”