I fell into a coma and re-emerged in hospital to learn my whole life would have to change.
Diabetes was a grim thing for a 12 year-old back then, but I always saw life differently, and it didn't take me long to realise the one thing that terrorised my every waking minute - compulsory military training - was now over.
They ran a ballot system in 1961, and I knew my date would come up. Every physical and psychological fear I knew was contained in compulsory military training. It was six years away, and I was already waking in the night, thinking about it.
Flat feet would get me out, but, while I thought my feet were flat, medically they weren't. However, diabetes was gold. I couldn't believe my luck.
The doctors at Wakari Hospital would have laughed incredulously over morning tea when they heard about the boy who smiled when told he had diabetes and would have to inject himself every day for the rest of his life. But that lucky day produced even more joy.
In hospital, a fellow patient and I sneaked up to the doctors' quarters daily and played table tennis. I learnt the game there and, a few years later, at a tournament in Timaru, met the woman to whom I have now been married for 36 years with nary, well, not nary, but far less than you might expect, a cross word.
Two amazing things then from October 21, 1961. You wouldn't read about it. But you would, because there's three.
At 21, I could have gone to San Francisco, making sure I wore some flowers in my hair and, as a diabetic, probably turned into an avocado and changed my name to Angel Eyeball.
But, grounded by this lucky disease, I stayed here and stayed alive. All this from just one day. Phew. And yes, there's even a fourth.
The kids in my 1961 class wrote the mandatory get-well-soon letters, and I wrote many pages in reply, analysing each letter in minute detail and describing how much fun macabre hospital life can be.
Black humour. It was the first creative thing I ever wrote.
I had no interest in writing at 12 - and here we are now, 50 years on, still writing, and still writing about disease. Some people just never grow up.
• Roy Colbert is an ODT columnist.
If you would enjoy sharing your "Best day of my life, except for ..." story, please email: mark.price@odt.co.nz for details.
