To Be Or Not To Be...?

On page 32 of my new book on managing diabetes, I tell my favorite anecdote about the things I've learned along the way.

It was fourteen months ago. I had been diagnosed as diabetic for about six years already and had been doing a fine job of managing my disease until sometime the year before, when my best efforts and the advice of my primary physician fell flat and I needed new input. I had finally gotten an appointment with the nearest endocrinologist and it took him less than ten minutes to determine that I needed to be on insulin.

Not only was I shocked and horrified by the news, which I had feared from the moment I was first diagnosed. But additionally, I thought it meant that I was dying.

This was not radically different from my grasp of the situation when I heard the original diagnosis. The doctor said, "Diabetes." And I heard, "Dying." He didn't say that, but that's what my brain computed. And it was a year or more before it became obvious to me that it was otherwise. By that time, I had settled into new routines and was enjoying my life more than ever, so I forgot to be scared and just moved on. Until I heard the word "insulin."

Enter my favorite anecdote. I had made the appointment with the endocrinologist because my diabetes was no longer manageable. No matter how rigorously I monitored my diet and oral medications, I could run four miles and still come home with a blood glucose reading of 225. I knew I was in trouble. But the doctor seemed unimpressed. He casually delivered his prescription putting me on daily doses of two different types of insulin while I sat staring at him as if I had just been instructed to pick out my burial plot.

After talking back and forth for a few minutes, pretending I wasn't about to slide onto the floor and start blubbering incoherently, I made my best effort not to sound like a movie script and choked out, "So, Doc, can you give me some idea about how long I have left?" He looked startled. "It's not the diabetes that kills you!" he exclaimed. "It's the complications!"

And this is the baseline concept that keeps me on track on a daily basis. Diabetes is not a death sentence as long as I manage it. And managing it does not mean my life is over. Actually, it may mean that the best years of my life have only just begun.