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I hadn’t intended to start a new weight-loss regime on January 1. For someone who seldom stands on tradition, making a New Year’s resolution (especially the same one that almost everyone else makes) seemed hokey.
Besides, I hate going to the gym during the first week of the year. It’s crowded with people who’ve made resolutions. And they’re all fat. Oh wait, that’s me!
My first holiday with diabetes was challenging on many levels. Like most newly diagnosed sufferers, I was trying my best to follow the regimen set down by my doctor and my nurse educator.
While exercise was not new to me, eating healthfully was. For the first time in my life I was reading nutrition labels, scanning boxes for the word “carbohydrates.” My nurse educator taught me to count carbs, a method for managing sugar intake that was just coming into vogue.
My approach befuddled the gathered familial masses.
Last year about this time, I begged my doctors to let me try a relatively new drug for type 2 diabetics. It was showing promise in stabilizing blood sugars and helping diabetics lose weight.
Hallelujah and pass the pie! I can control my blood sugar better and lose weight?
It’s official: I’m fat.
I came to this (not so startling) conclusion the other night as I refastened a button on one of my dress shirts for the third time in under an hour. My burgeoning belly had caused the recurring wardrobe malfunction—and sent me to a scale, where I confirmed my diagnosis: 200 pounds on this 5′7" frame.
Somewhere a statistician with a body mass index is tallying another obese American.
Seeing myself as overweight has never been something I’ve struggled with, even in college when I tipped the scales at 220. You see I was lifting weights and playing rugby, and on the field I was fast: Even though I played second line, I could have been a wing. I certainly wasn’t “fat.”
Since Halloween there’s been a familiar refrain in the Kelley household: “Daddy, can I have some candy?”
Even if I were not diabetic, the sugar-induced excitement in my three-year-old daughter’s voice would bug me. Where Elise sees suckers, chocolates, and candy corn, I see cavities, childhood obesity, and high-fructose corn syrup.
But because I have diabetes—and because my oldest brother has it, and because my grandfather had it, and so on and so forth—I also see bigger issues. Will Elise (or my 12-month-old son Graeme) develop this disease?
Most fliers have that one bad flight they can’t shake from their memory—the turbulent trip, the close call with a pelican, the flight with the overly perfumed passenger in 13B. Me? Every time I board a plane I’m haunted by one particular flight from Omaha, Nebraska, to Birmingham, Alabama.
These days as I debrief in the airport lounge with other business travelers, I wish I could wax eloquently about the near head-on collision we had with a flight bound for Orlando. Or talk about the newly enhanced woman I met en route from a cosmetic surgery clinic in Miami. (“These are new,” she gestured proudly.) Or even remember the time I was upgraded to first class and sat next to basketball legend Charles Barkley.
For the first eight years of my life as a diabetic, I was able to manage my blood sugar with oral drugs, diet, and exercise. But as the years have passed and my disease has slowly progressed, I’ve had to make adjustments.
A few years ago I began taking Lantus, a long-acting or basal insulin. Though I wasn’t happy about having to inject myself at all, I was grateful that it only had to be once a day, and, therefore, I seldom needed to carry my needles, alcohol pads, or vial. It’s hard enough to remember to take my pills and carry my blood-sugar monitor.
Needles carry a stigma. When I do happen to be seen taking my insulin or simply discarding my “gear,” I often get that sneer reserved for the most vile of drug addicts. Parents hurry their children along or avert their eyes. Occasionally I see a flicker of pity usually reserved for children at their annual doctor visits and ill adults during flu season. Maybe all this is really in my head, but I worry about it.
I’m about to start cheating again. I know this because I have misplaced my blood sugar monitor. It’s a new, small one, the kind that’s very easy to misplace. I have lost it because I know Thanksgiving is in a few weeks, and I need an excuse to not check my stats. Mainly, I wish to avoid harassment from well-intentioned family members.
When your wife and your mother are both nurses who specialize in endocrinology, you learn to make excuses. “Have you checked your blood sugar?” my mom asks every time I sit down at the dinner table. We eat with her frequently, and it’s become an old routine. “You know, you should check it before dinner.”
I remind her that I have had Type 2 diabetes for nearly 10 years and I know how to take care of myself by now. But before I’ve even finished my sentence, my wife joins the fray: “Ask him when his last doctor’s visit was.”
