The thrill of meeting a fellow diabetic - reeling em in

There's a possibility that one of my relatives, Don Garber and wife Liz, will drive down from Long Island to visit Mom. He's a retired physicist who grows orchids in his house. For my novel, I cribbed that idea and had my protagonist, an eccentric professor of astronomy, grow orchids in his basement.

Gee, I said to mom, we have movies of Donny when he went to Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland (now Case Western Reserve). We should put these on DVDs, where the resolution is sposed to be very good.

Donna picked up a satchelful of movie reels from mom's house this morning to bring them to a nearby conversion center.

She came in the house where I was just finishing breakfast and working on my kidney memoir while I ate.

"My life is ruled by diabetes," I said. "I've got to be home in 3 hours to eat. That's 12:30."

Off we drove to the video store "Make a DVD" 10 minutes away in the Justa Farm Shopping Center near Ben and Irv's Deli. Bent-over old people were entering.

"Don't look," I said to Donna. "That's what we're gonna look like."

"We already do," she said.

My friend Katy works at the DVD store and was on duty behind the counter. She studied design at Rochester Institute of Technology, a tough school to get into, but she knows her stuff.

I met her two bosses - Joel Fink and Barry Greenberg.

I figured we'd be there half an hour at the most and then we'd stop at the sock outlet right next door.

They had a huge TV screen on the wall on which their colorful website was visible. Click here. Wanna see what I do for a living? I asked. Then I got the New Directions website up on the big screen.

Then I showed them my blog where I had a photo of pistachios.

"I ate 200 pistachios last nite," said Joel. I thought he was kidding but he wasn't.

I looked at my watch.

"Oh my god, Donna, it's 12:30 already. We've gotta go home. I have to eat. Diabetes rules my life."

At that, Joel Fink said, "I've got diabetes."

When you hear that, you assume the person takes pills, metaformen, usually.

"I'm type 1," he said. "I've had diabetes since I was 13."

"You look great!" I said. "You must exercise a lot."

"Yeah, I walk around the store," he said.

He's had an insulin pump for 7 years and showed it to us. A tube was stuck in his belly and delivers the insulin subcutaneously. He showed us how he takes his sugar level and then calculates how much insulin he needs.


I asked if he'd take my glucose level. I always worry that I'm low and near to passing out. Instead it was 156, high. That darn whole wheat bun I had for breakfast, only a quarter of it, had done me in again. Joel and I talked about all the starches we must be careful about such as brown rice and pasta. He said he does better with ice cream than with rice and pasta.

I told Joel about a delicious meal my friend Claudia and I had at the Vietnamese restaurant Pho and Beyond, right next door to Weinrich's Bakery. When I came home my blood sugar was just a teeny bit high and I went on the exercise bike for 25 minutes while talking to Ada on the phone and hearing about her depression group Tuesday nite. Even tho it was pouring that nite, we had a great turnout.

It was so great today meeting a fellow diabetic. As Joel said, the doctors know a lot, but the patients know more - they've got to live with the disease.

He actually said he'd come to New Directions to give a talk about diabetes. He probly didn't realize that I took him at his word.

When I went shopping today at the Giant, I went upstairs to see if we could book a room. Sure enuf, they have an opening on Tuesday nite, December 13.

I booked it.

I can still change my mind. I told him I'd also like to talk a bit about having back surgery.

Question is: Will anyone come?