My mother-in-law has had diabetes since she was 7 years old. Although she's a nurse by training, up until around April of this year she had not seen her doctor for over 2 years. She was forced to go into early retirement by her doctor--no surprise, she was always very weak, very pale and frail, she had a high-stress job and she had been smoking for 12 years. In May, my sister-in-law's cat bit her and she ende up in the hospital. While there, they found that 3 of her arteries were almost completely clogged. Because the cat bite took so long to heal, they had to postpone her bypass surgery until the end of May. She ended up having a quintuple bypass and her aortic valve was replaced. Her recovery has been incredibly slow and she is still not really in the recovery stage. Since her surgery, she's had cellulitis, has not been able to eat much because of constant nausea (last I heard she weighed 98 pounds), has dizzy spells, chronic fluid on her lungs,talks out of her head (dillusional), has seizures, leaky blood vessels in her eyes(causing complete blindness--too much coumadin) and last week she had her gallbladder taken out. She just turned 50 last month and I am very worried about her. She just went back into the hospital because she kept fainting, still can't keep anything down and she again has fluid on her lungs. She said she had something like "Donner's" (sp?) disease which is where you have chronic fluid on the lungs. I have never heard of this disease and can't find it anywhere on the internet. Her doctors (by now there are too many to count) seem to only be concerned with their specialty instead of looking at her case as a whole. I can't get any information out of them and honestly have never heard of someone so young having so many dibilitating problems. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this situation...if you or anyone you know has had these multiple complications (even some of them) and if you've ever heard of this "Donner's" disease. Thank you so much!

• Re: Complications associated with diabetes--healing wounds, eyesight, athersclerosis, fluid on the lungs, Donner's disease? Ken 11:21:53 10/21/00 (0)