Living on the edge
Karen Kemp has come close to dying of diabetes — the disease that killed her sister — numerous times. Her drive not only to stay alive but also to help others is remarkable, as DAVID SHERMAN discovers.
Karen Kemp was 27 and travelling the world. It was to be the time of her life. Instead, it almost killed her.
She had worked three jobs then took a year off, travelling through China, Southeast Asia and Australia.
When she arrived in the Indian capital of New Delhi, she was suddenly extremely thirsty and experienced dramatic weight loss, dropping 30 lbs. in a week. “It was India, it was hot, everyone was thirsty and thin,” she says today, smiling, as if to say, “Boy, was I dumb.”
Soon she was weak, dizzy and bent over with abdominal pain. She started panicking and quickly changed plans to return home to Canada. But when she arrived at the airport, they wouldn’t let her board the plane because she was so ill. Her skin tone was yellow and she remembers feeding coins into vending machines to buy small cartons of milk. She drank a couple of dozen.
“All I could think about was my next carton of milk,” she says.
Down to 98 pounds and with a raging fever of 107 F, she tried to phone her father in Montreal, but her brain was frying, overloaded with sugar. She couldn’t remember how to use a phone and stood there staring at it.
“No one would help me. I looked like a drug addict,” she says. “My brain wouldn’t work anymore.”
Her sister, Brenda Cindy Kemp, 29, had had diabetes for five years. Kemp knew all too well about the disease, but she was too far gone to contemplate that her pancreas had suddenly succumbed.
What Karen didn’t know was that two weeks before, her sister had died in her sleep while staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Santa Monica, California.
(“Dead in bed” is a term people with diabetes use for those who die in their sleep from a blood sugar plunge.)
“She went too low and I was too high,” says Kemp. “Either way, you can die.”
Kemp spent two days in the airport, with her temperature rising, until a ticket agent had sympathy and found a way to get her on a plane.
During the flight, Kemp recalls the flight attendants carrying her to the washroom every half-hour. Fading, she slipped her father’s phone number to the man sitting beside her, telling him she was sure she would die. Would he call her father?
She then slipped into a coma. The plane made an emergency landing in California, where her sister had died days before, and she was rushed to a hospital, placed in an ice-packed bed, hooked up to monitors and IV, and put under a death watch. Her hair was falling out.
Her family in Canada was called and told she had six hours to live. They were still in shock from Brenda Cindy’s death, also reported long distance from California.
A nurse came in to hold her hand and a priest was outside. Her blood sugar was 14 times higher than normal, literally off the charts.
“I never felt so frightened in my life,” she says. “I was so alone.”
Kemp survived. It was kind of a miracle. Today, she is an ebullient 56-year-old with a 17-year-old daughter, an almost permanent smile, an irrepressible will to live and host of her own Rogers TV show about diabetes in Ottawa.
“It happened for a reason,” she says. “I got to live and my sister didn’t, so I’m going to help other people.”
Kemp has become an encyclopedia on diabetes. She researches her own show, interviews guests, writes her scripts and gets sponsors so she can make a few dollars.
Kemp says she always exercised, ate well, looked after herself. Her diabetes was clearly genetic. So far, her daughter and her older brother are diabetes free.
Despite the genetic accident, Kemp, a glass-full kind of woman who was once chastised by an employer for being too cheerful — “So I quit” — says the disease has so many ways to bring you down, physically and mentally.
“Every time you test and your sugar is not in the range — failure,” she says. “You feel like a failure.”
Stress, cold, food, lack of exercise all contribute to the roller-coaster blood sugar scores that need to be moderated to live properly.
“My daughter knows, ‘ don’t stress me out,’” she says. “You get up, test your sugar, eat something and wonder what and when you’re going to eat again and when you’re going to exercise.”
But no matter what she does, or how well she does it, there’s always the risk of being found “dead in bed.”
One night last month, she woke up to the beeping of her insulin pump. Her blood sugar had fallen to dangerous levels, but she was already in the state where she couldn’t figure out what to do.
There was, as always, an emergency supply of juice and an energy bar on her night table, but she couldn’t remember she had to eat or drink to stay alive.
She fell back asleep and a few hours later, the pump woke her again. This time she figured out she had to down some juice. She had flirted with death once again.
Kemp is Type 1 diabetes, but says people with Type 2 are always told it’s their fault. It is assumed they’re sick because they didn’t take care of themselves.
“So who cares?” she says. “People have no sympathy. Fifty per cent of Type 2 suffer from depression.”
The depression is not surprising, but Kemp’s drive is to stay alive and to help others.
Besides the TV show, she started a walking group for people with diabetes and inaugurated a diabetes awareness badge for Girl Guides. In 2011, the Canadian Diabetes Association awarded her its Volunteer of the Year award.
On Nov. 14, World Diabetes Awareness Day, she organized the Runway to Awareness Fashion Show on Preston Street with the Diabetes Awareness Partners of Ottawa, a nonprofit committee Kemp founded.
Kemp knows only too well that her longevity is suspect. She says in “diabetes years,” she’s in her 70s, though she barely looks out of her 40s.
“Dead in bed” is only one ending of a long list of “negative outcomes” for those with the disease.
She seems unfazed. She has too much to do to contemplate mortality.
“Try to live one day with diabetes,” she suggests. “Write down what you eat, exercise. Try it for just one day.”