His diabetes diagnosis as a teen was supposed to be a sentence of early death. But he, giving a lot of credit to medicine and science, pushed that out. Multiple hospital stays, lost little toes on each foot, and early adoption of a new technological innovation, an insulin pump, kept him going. Later, attempts to save his leg meant another long hospital stay, including hours in a hyperbaric chamber, in the hope that high pressure oxygen could overcome a circulatory system choked by decades of diabetic stress and strain. Then a fancy prosthetic, which kept him mostly mobile, at least enough for 2-year-old Molly to include him when choreographing dances. He marveled at the fact that they could have fitted him for a mountain climbing specific leg, if he was climbing mountains in his 60s, or ever for that matter. Maybe he should start, he quipped. https://newsletter.mattdragon.com/archive/10-years/