The Real Reason Mary Ingalls became Blind

[MacMadame]

It seems as though they were all diagnosed as adults?

There seems to be some confusion in this thread about diabetes. There are two types. Type 1 is also known as Juvenile Diabetes. It's where your body doesn't make insulin and you have to give it insulin from outside sources. I don't know what the state of treatment was in those days, but I would expect it wasn't good and most of those kids died quite young.

Type II diabetes is also know as "Adult Onset Diabetes". (Though these days more and more kids are being diagnosed with it.) It's where your insulin levels whack out in response to what you eat. Since it's something you develop over time (it seems to develop in people with the genetic tendency in response to long-term eating habits), most people are diagnosed as an adult. (And are often also overweight to obese.) Type II can be controlled with diet a large portion of the time, especially if caught early and is treated these days with drugs like metformin, not with insulin.

 

[Susan1]

There seems to be some confusion in this thread about diabetes. There are two types. Type 1 is also known as Juvenile Diabetes. It's where your body doesn't make insulin and you have to give it insulin from outside sources. I don't know what the state of treatment was in those days, but I would expect it wasn't good and most of those kids died quite young.

Type II diabetes is also know as "Adult Onset Diabetes". (Though these days more and more kids are being diagnosed with it.) It's where your insulin levels whack out in response to what you eat. Since it's something you develop over time (it seems to develop in people with the genetic tendency in response to long-term eating habits), most people are diagnosed as an adult. (And are often also overweight to obese.) Type II can be controlled with diet a large portion of the time, especially if caught early and is treated these days with drugs like metformin, not with insulin.

Yeah, that makes sense. But it hardly seems like it could be cause of death in so many members of the Ingalls family. I don't know how anybody survived the way they had to eat and cook, and the unsanitary conditions regarding water and personal hygiene anyway.

So...... went to the library today. The third book in A Little House Traveler, "The Road Back" is Almanzo and Laura's trip back to DeSmet, SD in 1931 BY CAR. (I don't know, I can't picture Laura in anything but a covered wagon or train!) The first two books are On the Way Home and West From Home, which I already have.

It's only 57 pages with some pictures; Laura's notes of crops and weather and prices and people. The June 18th entry says that "Grace is on a diet for diabetes". When they first got there Laura wrote that Grace was "not looking very well". Nate, Grace's husband has asthma so bad he has to sleep sitting up. She didn't mention anything about Carrie's health when they got to her house later. I wonder how long since she had seen them. She writes that they went to the old house to look at Ma and Mary's things, and "Everything of value left there has disappeared." Geez.

Oh, yeah, Laura was 64, Manly was 74. They were gone 4 weeks, drove 2,530 miles and they spent $120.

Does anybody OWN Pioneer Girl? I don't remember reading anything about diabetes in that at all.

 

[Lucy25]

There seems to be some confusion in this thread about diabetes. There are two types. Type 1 is also known as Juvenile Diabetes. It's where your body doesn't make insulin and you have to give it insulin from outside sources. I don't know what the state of treatment was in those days, but I would expect it wasn't good and most of those kids died quite young.

Type II diabetes is also know as "Adult Onset Diabetes". (Though these days more and more kids are being diagnosed with it.) It's where your insulin levels whack out in response to what you eat. Since it's something you develop over time (it seems to develop in people with the genetic tendency in response to long-term eating habits), most people are diagnosed as an adult. (And are often also overweight to obese.) Type II can be controlled with diet a large portion of the time, especially if caught early and is treated these days with drugs like metformin, not with insulin.

Thank you!

 

[Lucy25]

Yeah, that makes sense. But it hardly seems like it could be cause of death in so many members of the Ingalls family. I don't know how anybody survived the way they had to eat and cook, and the unsanitary conditions regarding water and personal hygiene anyway.

Does anybody OWN Pioneer Girl? I don't remember reading anything about diabetes in that at all.

I do. I have not read it completely, but the index at the end is incredibly detailed. Nothing under "diabetes". There is a long list of "illnesses and disease" - mentions boils, Caroline's brain hemorrhage (is this how she died?), headaches, inflammation of bowels, malaria, rheumatism, stomach aches, strokes, viral meningoencephalitis, lockjaw & whooping cough (among many other illnesses), but no mention of diabetes. Weird!

 

[Lucy25]

Hey, if you're in Detroit, most of Laura's papers are at the Detroit Public Library per the Zuchert book!

I actually have some of Rose's writings. Did not know until recently she along with Ayn Rand is considered one of the founding mothers of the modern libertarian-objectivist movement.

I have always meant to get down there. Pretty silly of me, really. Detroit is 30 minutes away.

 

[danceronice]

Well, I've been in the DPL and don't remember it ever being mentioned, but I think it was a school field trip so I probably wouldn't have been able to look at them anyway....

 

[Skittl1321]

So...... went to the library today. The third book in A Little House Traveler, "The Road Back" is Almanzo and Laura's trip back to DeSmet, SD in 1931 BY CAR. (I don't know, I can't picture Laura in anything but a covered wagon or train!) The first two books are On the Way Home and West From Home, which I already have..

Every time in drive cross country in a matter of days I think of the pioneers who mostly walked it...

Laura traveled by airplane to visit Rose in San Francisco. It's so fascinating to imagine the history she was a part of - migrating across the US in a wagon to flying. She died in 1957. I wonder what she did during the wars, for instance.

Makes me feel really unimportant. Though I'm pretty glad for the indoor plumbing.

 

[judiz]

I know, it's amazing to think of all the things Laura and her siblings saw in their lifetimes.

 

[ballettmaus]

Every time in drive cross country in a matter of days I think of the pioneers who mostly walked it...

Laura traveled by airplane to visit Rose in San Francisco. It's so fascinating to imagine the history she was a part of - migrating across the US in a wagon to flying. She died in 1957. I wonder what she did during the wars, for instance.

Makes me feel really unimportant. Though I'm pretty glad for the indoor plumbing.

I realized a few years ago that some of us used to have or have that kind of history in front of us. My grandmother was born in 1916, my grandfather in 1921. His father wanted to book him a passage on that fateful flight of the Hindenburg as a reward, his mother, fortunately, was against it and he travelled by ship. He saw the year it opened.
Unfortunately, I became aware of that too late and there isn't much more that I know. It kind of makes me wish that everyone of that time had kept a diary because it is definitely fascinating to think that there are people who were actual witnesses to so, so many inventions.

 

[AxelAnnie]

I know the feeling. . There is no one left on my mom's side to ask anything of. . My dad's brother is 94..and about to cel brake his 70th wedding anniversary . . He remembers lots and lots. . But he loses all memory if asked a question that might put someone in a bad light.

 

[Susan1]

Laura traveled by airplane to visit Rose in San Francisco. It's so fascinating to imagine the history she was a part of - migrating across the US in a wagon to flying. She died in 1957. I wonder what she did during the wars, for instance.

In 1915, she took a train to San Francisco.

 

[mag]

In 1915, she took a train to San Francisco.

Correct. The book of her letters is a very interesting read.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

I grew up about 30 miles from the original little house on the prairie near Independence, KS. The cabin there is a reconstruction based on Laura's description of the one Pa built and his hand-dug well still exists. http://www.littlehouseontheprairiemuseum.com/

In 2008, the company that produced the TV series sued the museum, claiming they owned the rights to the name. There was a fund-raising campaign to help the owners fight the lawsuit; they were barely meeting expenses to keep the non-profit museum open before the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in 2011 but terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The museum continues to use the name.

http://www.kmbc.com/Lawsuit-Filed-Over-Kan-Little-House-Museum/12331632

http://cjonline.com/news/state/2011-01-25/suit-over-little-house-museum-settled

 

[Skittl1321]

In 1915, she took a train to San Francisco.

I know there is documentation of her flying. Maybe she made a different trip, or I got the destination wrong. I know that she visited Rose once by plane. But Rose lived in a lot of different places.

Her 1915 trip was only a bit more than a decade after the first flight ever, so it is unlikely there were a lot of commercial passenger flights then (and I have read her book documenting that train trip). But she lived until 1957, she fit an airplane in there elsewhere.

Another interesting thought: Laura was alive when Elvis had his first #1 hit.

 

[ballettmaus]

In 2008, the company that produced the TV series sued the museum, claiming they owned the rights to the name. There was a fund-raising campaign to help the owners fight the lawsuit; they were barely meeting expenses to keep the non-profit museum open before the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in 2011 but terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The museum continues to use the name.

How can they own the rights to the name when one of Laura's books was called "Little House on the Prairie"?

 

[danceronice]

How can they own the rights to the name when one of Laura's books was called "Little House on the Prairie"?

Rights are complicated. It depends on what they bought as they had to buy the rights to use the name to make the (sh*tt*) TV show.

 

[Susan1]

For anyone interested in the Laura sites, The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

I just got this at the library today. We're supposed to have a lot of snow Monday and Tuesday, so I'm ready to curl up with it.

And for anyone going back and reading their collection, between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake, check out Old Town in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant. It's ABOUT the Ingalls' time in Burr Oak, Iowa. It's written as Laura would have. Copyright 2002, so it's a little more "mature" than Laura wrote, sort of? It addresses Freddie's birth and death and then Grace's birth soon after. And the hotel and school and other people they knew. Even though I read about Burr Oak in the Zochert book and Pioneer Girl, it was interesting to read it like I was reading Laura's other books. She even got some of the information from the "unpublished manuscript" (at the time) of Pioneer Girl.

p.s. I'm glad there are other Laura nerds out there!