Diabetics Behaving Badly: Confessions of a Type 2 Insulin Junkiee

By Al Stevens

There's nothing funny about diabetes. But from the mind of Al Stevens, long-time columnist for Dr. Dobb's Journal, stand-up comedian, and author of "Politically Incorrect Scripts for Comedy Ventriloquists," the lighter side of the disease can make you laugh while it scares the crap out of you with its potential for ruining and shortening your life.

From his first diagnosis, which he blames on a topless bar, to memory losses and hallucinations, to getting thrown out of a pharmacy, Stevens tells with good nature and humor the story of his thirty-plus years coping with diabetes.

Whether you're a diabetic, related to one, or have one as a friend—which most people do—you will gain new insight into the disease that Stevens calls "public enemy number three." You might even pick up some pointers on how to cope, what to do, and, by example, what not to do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mockingbird Songs & Stories
• Release date: Nov 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393934493

Book preview

Chapter 1. By Way of Introduction

I yam what I yam.

Popeye

I blame it on a topless bar. That’s right, I got diabetes from a topless bar. Well, not exactly. I’ll tell that story later.

My name is Al, and I’m a diabetic. I’m also a writer, comedian, and jazz musician, none of which have much to do with this story except to the extent that diabetes has affected in one way or another my ability to work.

Before I retired, I wrote books and magazine articles about computer programming, entertained in comedy clubs, and played jazz music in saloons and onstage. I worked all the big towns and countless comedy clubs and jazz festivals. I was a sideman and warm-up act rather than a headliner, so you’ve probably never heard of me, unless you were a computer programmer in the late twentieth century, in which case you might remember my name—if your memory’s still working.

Now I write fiction for the hell of it (certainly not for the money) and take the occasional gig telling jokes and playing the piano, sax, or bass at local functions.

For the second half of my professional career, I have been a diabetic, and that’s what this book is about. Why have I written this book? How many more stories of diabetics behaving badly do you need to hear? First, perhaps if I come out of the cheater’s closet and confess all, I’ll shame myself into paying more attention to the disciplines necessary to avoid a miserable end to my life. Perhaps these stories will move you to clean up your own act.

There are 345 million of us in the world, 25 million in the US. That’s one in twelve, enough to swing a national election. Eighty percent of diabetics are poor and middle-class citizens. It doesn’t seem to bother the rich as much. All the more reason for us less fortunate souls to organize a voting block.

Seven million of the 25 million US diabetics don’t know they have it. But, unless they live in a cave with no contact with the outside world, they will.

The incidence of diabetes is growing steadily as more and more people let their weight get out of control and keep eating junk food. Projections say that unless something changes, by 2050 one in three people in the US will be diabetic. I’ll be 110 years old then, so I probably won’t get to enjoy the company of so many kindred souls.

I am a youthful (I am told) seventy-four year old male, and I am a type 2 diabetic. The memoir in this book is about how I came to be a diabetic and the steps, missteps, and pitfalls, that diabetes brought to me along the way. It’s not a poor me sympathy troll. Most of you are either diabetics yourself, or you have one in the family. Otherwise, why buy this book? So, rather than openly weeping over my plight, some or most of which you already share, you may instead spread the word; tell all your diabetic friends about this book.

I was on the road with a big band several years ago. The band consisted of older guys like me and young guys who were along for the experience and to handle the heavy lifting. On breaks the old guys would sit together, and the kids would congregate elsewhere. One time one of the younger players came over and listened in on what we old-timers were talking about. After a while he said, I thought I’d hear stories about the old days, the famous cats you guys played with, and all that. My buddies over there talk mostly about girls, cars, and sports. But you old cats talk about illnesses, doctors, medications...

This book, then, is the journal of one of the old cats.

I wish I could tell you how I beat the disease so you could follow my example and recover too. But I didn’t beat it; I live with it. I’ll tell some of what I should have done and didn’t. But even if I’d done everything right, I wouldn’t have conquered the disease. I might have delayed its onset, slowed its progress, and postponed its complications, but there was no avoiding it, and there is no cure.

If I’ve done my job right, my story can entertain you with the lighter side of a dark disease. It’s not all doom and gloom. Take it seriously, but don’t let it get you down.

The Appendix presents my understanding of the disease from the medical perspective of a layman. If you already have a full understanding of diabetes, you can skip that discussion, but I urge you not to. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I think I know how this ailment has affected my life and will probably affect my death. Perhaps my insights can help you understand and cope with your experiences as a diabetic.

Chapter 2. All in the Family

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.

Charles Dickens

I am the third of five brothers. A middle child. My two older brothers, Sonny and Jay, were diabetics in the days before we had the controls and medications we have today. Jay came down with it at about twenty, and Sonny at about thirty. Both died young, Jay at fifty-four, and Sonny on his fifty-sixth birthday. Both men suffered the consequences of the insidious disease, which, among other things, compromises the heart’s functions, the failure of which brought both of them down in 1993. My younger brother Walter has been spared the disease. The baby in the family, Julian, has been diagnosed as a prediabetic and has reached the age of seventy, managing it with diet and exercise. His is the better example to follow, but it’s my book. So you’re stuck with mine.

Our diabetes had a prophetic beginning that foreshadowed the years to come. I was a toddler, and, in those days, people left their children at home alone. Not for days at a time, but for short whiles so they could tend to their lives away from the house. One day when our mother was off somewhere, probably next door visiting with a neighbor, I wandered into the kitchen and found my older brother Jay on the kitchen table eating sugar from the sugar bowl. I climbed up and joined him. When the front door opened, Jay scrambled off the table and ran outside leaving me sitting on the table to take the rap. Mom came in to find me sitting there, grinning in the middle of a mess of sugar and with the sweet stuff sprinkled all over my face. I suppose I got a spanking. Parents spanked their children back then too.

Years later when Jay was diagnosed with diabetes, I reminded him of the incident, which he did not recall. The prophesy of the episode hit closer to home for me when my own diagnosis came in.

When Jay was twenty, he felt poorly one week and lost a lot of weight. A trip to the doctor delivered the bad news. He was a type 1 diabetic. He got his medication and routine underway and then made the rounds of relatives to tell them the tragic news. Jay was an emotional young man who found extreme drama in any situation and was not above using his condition to get sympathy. I went with him when he visited our Grammy Fowler.

You had to know her. She was a character with odd quirks and old-fashioned ideas. Think of Aunt Clara on the Bewitched sitcom of the sixties, and you have Grammy Fowler to a tee. She looked and acted like the usually flustered character played so masterfully by actress Marian Lorne.

We sat at the kitchen table in Grammy Fowler’s old house while Jay told his tale of woe: how his life was ruined, how he was doomed to a destiny of abstinence from good things to eat, of syringes, medications, and frequent hospital stays, of a reduced life expectancy. Grammy Fowler listened intently and with sympathy until his sad story ended and then said in that quavering old voice that was so distinctively hers, Well, Jay, do you suppose it was something you ate?

Jay’s final years were rough. He continued to work, but he made many trips to the hospital and had to take a lot of time off from his government job. He was a popular guy, charming and intelligent, with many friends, and his co-workers chipped in and