I was so excited when I heard that the new Miss America was a pump-wearing diabetic that I wanted a date with her. We could get together and exchange stories about funny things we've done while having insulin reactions. Or how annoying it is to explain to airport security that it's an insulin pump, not a beeper. We could shoot up before dinner together on a little bit of Humalog, or debate the merits of Lente versus NPH.

Then I heard her speak.

Bitch.

Miss America said that she wants to prove to America that dreams can come true, "even if you're not perfect."

Instantly I was reminded of that cute deaf girl that was Miss America a few years ago. People won't remember her name either, but rather that she had overcome insurmountable odds to become Miss America. What exactly were those insurmountable odds? That she was a freak? Hardly. She was some young babe that looked good in a swimsuit and an evening gown and was good at smiling for the camera and dispensing cliches, even with a speech impediment. For the first time in my life, I was ashamed to be a diabetic. I was a member of 1998's handicap-of-the-year-club.

Perhaps what Miss America didn't realize while she was using her diabetes as a crutch to hobble along to her crown was that the biggest handicap that diabetics face is not their own limits, but those that other people try to impose on them. There are phrases that the uneducated use like, "You can't eat that. You're a diabetic" and "You should be more careful. You're a diabetic." By using her diabetes as the mountain that she had to climb over to get to her supposed peak, she was encouraging such sanctimonious comments to be heaped on the rest of us by would-be well wishers.

In contrast to the would-be doctors that knew my disease better than I did, would be others who would say things like "at least it's not cancer or paralysis or something serious like that."  If diabetes was that simple, why don't you sign up for it? It's not something you would wish on your worst enemy. It's a disease, and I don't give thanks to anyone for this great educational opportunity.

Dr. Ruth Weinstock tried to explain to my classmates in medical endocrinology at SUNY Health Science Center at Syracue about how diabetics have to suffer from the psychological aspects of the disease as much as the physical. Diabetics will be told that they will suffer from gangrene, impotence, amputation, coronary artery disease, heart attack, stroke, glaucoma, kidney failure and other endocrine or autoimmune disorders--and that they can lead a perfectly normal life. The discrepency didn't seem to sink in on the future doctors of America. Medical schools don't conduct philosophy exams.

Stronger than the fear of a complicated death was my independent side, though. Whenever someone would ask if it was a pain to take all those shots, I would say it was like brushing my teeth. It's something you do to survive. To me, the real freaks were the people that didn't take insulin. I'd explain that the more often you took insulin, and in smaller doses, the more well-controlled the disease would be. I'd explain the difference between adult and juvenile-onset diabetes, now called non-insulin and insulin-dependent diabetes and how most diabetics were of the less-serious non-insulin dependent sort. That even though diabetes is listed as the fourth leading killer in the country, the statistics are elevated by a large number of old and out of shape Type II diabetics, which was a completely opposite disease from the type that I had. I learned an awful lot of biology, and I bored an awful lot of people with it. I never let anyone escape without the idea that diabetes couldn't be controlled with knowledge and a few thousand shots.

I went on an insulin pump about three years ago. It's perfect for my lifestyle, which varies from eating at Taco Bell to beer drinking to sleeping late on weekends to running in 10-mile races and travelling for a living. I never eat breakfast. My hemoglobin A1c tests run normal. It was really funny the time that someone said to me while we were naked that "there's something on your stomach..." I had forgotten.

My diabetes is not like my mother's breast cancer, or Gary's lupus, or the fact that Flip can't move his arms and legs. The pump is the first visible sign of my disease, and ironically, because of it, I often forget that I'm diabetic. I can control my diabetes. It doesn't control me. As far as handicaps go, it doesn't even rate.

Unfortunately, it's made by the same company that sponsors Miss America.

The real heroes of the disease are not bimbos.

Bobby Clarke, the first professional hockey player with diabetes once wrote, "I didn't want it, but I got it, and I was going to live with it" and then stopped talking about it and started playing hockey. Doctor David Dube told me to "do it" long before Nike took over the phrase. Sherry, one of my former students at Jamesville-DeWitt High School, would have beaten the hell out of anyone who told her she wasn't perfect--and then laughed with them about it later. None of us had to use diabetes to get where we are, like Miss America, who didn't even have to endure the mental trauma of having the disease in adolescence. She got diabetes two years before being crowned, along with an endorsement deal from the company that makes insulin pumps.

Miss America, you sold the rest of us out when you said that you've succeeded (at reaching the pinnacle of Barbiedom) in spite of having "imperfections". By making your supposed struggles seem like such a trial, you have set us back about fifteen years.
 

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Pancreas transplants only work one out of seven times. The new "Edmonton Protocol" will cure only 1,500 cases of diabetes per year because of a shortage of available transplantable cells. Please sign your organ donor card, tell your next of kin your wishes, and be a real hero to a diabetic someday.
However, the only thing that will cure diabetes someday is stem cell research. Urge our president not to sell out diabetics to appease conservative constituencies. I am a person with a right to life, even more than a cluster of cells smaller than a booger.
Even Republicans get diabetes.

Copyright Dave Sipley
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