Book excerpt: Diabetes can be a devastating disease, causing multiple degenerative conditions over the course of a person's life. Juvenile diabetes can be especially difficult because it strikes children. To live for 80 years with diabetes is a triumph that could only result from dedicated self-discipline, determination, and tenacity. These very qualities allowed James W. Quander, the author of this educational and inspirational autobiography, to live a full life into his 80s in spite of a prognosis to die before age ten.Diagnosed in 1924 with diabetes shortly before turning six, at a time when insulin injection was a new procedure, there was a stigma attached to having this disease. He kept his Big Secret until his senior years, in spite of hospitalizations and near-death experiences. Then, in an effort to educate others about living with diabetes, he often participated in personal and media interviews, and was featured in the Washington Post, Diabetes Forecast, Successful Living with Diabetes, and the Diabetic News.