My A1c is 7.4, and I’m a good enough diabetic. I’ve been diabetic since you had to purchase a bottle of strips and use one each morning as you peed. When glucose monitors came out, you had to plug them into an electrical outlet, and they were very expensive.

I have started and given up on a diabetic diet about fifty times. My finger pricks number in the millions. Because I also live with rheumatoid disease and chronic fatigue, there are a lot of holes in my body.

This week I had my Enbrel shot in my hip on Monday. On Tuesday I changed the insulin port (a hole in the stomach) and sensor (a hole in the arm). Wednesday I gave eight vials of blood at the lab (a hole in the other arm). Thursday I had my B12 injection and Friday I will have my second Enbrel shot (other hip). I’m skipping over the holes obtained during the ten years before my pump.

If you can’t tell, I am annoyed with having to live this way. But I am alive, and my A1c is 7.4—yes, I’ve had complications, more holes poked in my eyes with needles from cysts and retinopathy. I also have four straight screws in four of my fingers where the rheumatoid disease crumbled my finger joints. You see, I didn’t present my symptoms until I had damage because the first line of treatment for RA used to be prednisone, and I knew from watching an old episode of E.R. that diabetics can’t take prednisone.

I had little to no family support because my parents were busy dealing with their diseases, the ones they passed to me through the miracle of genetics. I did not appreciate the ADA magazine and their “diabetic family of the year.” It served to remind me that I was on my own, in debt for school, uninsured, and very ill.

You may be thinking; how did she manage with so much courage and grace? How did she raise a child single-handedly, and earn a PhD? How could she manage to follow this up with a twenty-seven-year university teaching career?

There are several answers to those questions but today I will present only one.

I’m a “good enough” diabetic. I cut corners. I ate lots of ice cream while seeking any legal source of endorphins I could find. The pain of Rheumatoid Disease and joint damage means I need endorphins. Finally, I designed my own diet.

Let me explain the diet I settled on about ten years ago because the principle behind it could help you design your own diet. It is a simple idea. For me, I had to be able to eat something I enjoyed, keep binge eating to a minimum, and quit the constant counting. I estimate for my pump’s sake, but I don’t eat numbers. I eat food.

The starch/sugar component I broke down as follows:

• Pasta
• Potatoes
• Rice
• Sweets
• Cereals
• Legumes
• Bread

 

Eating a healthy, fibrous cereal for a snack or breakfast lasts about three days for me and then I find myself eating Apple Jacks out of a mixing bowl. So I said no to cereal.

I eat sweets whenever I am eating away from home. A friend offers strawberry shortcake after dinner? Sure. A restaurant serves cobbler? Oh, yes! How do I get away with this? I DO NOT have any sweets in my home. I quit baking. My pound of stock sugar has lasted me ten years. I never buy a box of cookies or donuts to “nibble” on at home. Even birthdays—if it is held at my house there is no cake.

This way, the only time I have sweets is when the treat is in a portion, outside my home, a one-off deal. Then I provide insulin and it’s over.

Legumes. Legumes are the most nutritionally dense foods on the list of starches. Many cultures have survived on legumes, and flourished, including my own culture of Mexican people. I mix dark red kidney beans with fresh soybeans, raw bell peppers, cilantro, vinegar, and pepper for a fabulous salad meal. Protein, starch, and flavor galore! I eat as much from the legume category as possible.

That leaves pasta, potatoes, bread, and rice. I pondered over these. It is almost impossible to get any of these in a 15-gram portion, even at home (unless you like to torture yourself).

I decided that, really, the best part of pasta is what goes in it or on it. It is really just starch in little shapes but the coating makes you consume too much of it. If it is in a salad, or if I go to Italy, I will eat pasta. Otherwise, I will give it up. No pasta. I can live with that.

Rice is just the starch that fills you up when you are eating vegetables, such as in Chinese food. If you enjoy Chinese or Thai food, which I do, it is not difficult to say to the wait staff, “no rice.” They will lean closer and question you: “no rice?” Stay firm. Say it again, even if offered brown rice. “No rice.”

The hard part was choosing between bread and potatoes. You see, by this point, I was on a mission. In creating a diet that was real; a diet I could live with; designed for me by me, I was determined to choose only one dangerous form of starch and omit the others. Bread and potatoes are classic comfort foods to many of us.

I tested living without bread. I tested living with bread but without potatoes. What I discovered is that if I keep bread in my home, I will eat it. I will consume a loaf in a day or two. However, if I keep potatoes—real, raw potatoes in my home, they are safe. I have never reached for a raw potato in a time of stress or pain or exhaustion.

So as with sweets, I eat bread at restaurants or at someone’s home. But I crossed bread off my grocery list. My family sometimes will grumble that they wish they could make a sandwich. I tell them to go to a bagel or sub shop and get over it. I’m not keeping bread in my home.

Ah, the lowly potato!  Such a beautiful, shapely, and surprising piece of starch. There are so many wonderful dishes one can prepare with a lovely little potato.

I’m not very fond of meat, and the potato is a decent meat substitute, especially when paired with vegetables, spices, and a choice from the legume family. Indian vegetarian is my go-to food type for a special, home-cooked meal. No naan or basmati rice with the dish, but I got used to that. Potatoes are also great in Mexican food; omit the flour tortilla and have very thin corn tortillas, if any. Lots of fresh cilantro beats a tortilla any day.

You see, if you’re clever and determined, you can dump the diabetic diet. Quit counting carbs. Thumb your nose at the ADA. Eating is a social and emotional part of our lives; we are hard-wired that way. Chances are that if you are reading this, you have more than enough genetic bad luck to cope with. Add self-denial to your plate and you will be pretty miserable.

One warning! Never eat fast food. I have discovered something important. Fast food, besides being extremely unhealthy, only tastes good when you eat it fast. Try it; get some chicken nuggets or a burger and try eating it slowly. It will become gelatinous, gluey wax paper right before your eyes, and it will taste as bad as it looks.

Stand up for your body’s desire to eat good food. Watch for symptoms such as sluggishness, blurry eyes, or excessive thirst; these things let you know when you need to back off the good life and diet for a week or two. Seek pleasure. Let joy replace guilt. Give as much as you can to others, and you, too, will be good enough.

It was a family trip turned nightmare.  Not the kind of nightmare one might find in a story by Flannery O’Connor but a nightmare none the less.  I was born in May and it was early August.  My parents, longing to be with family, were on their way to visit my nearest grandparents, and they stopped at Robbers’ Cave in Wilburton, Oklahoma.  As the temperatures soared and the air-conditioner-less car rattled along the highway I screamed.  I had been practically born with heat rash.  Now I was itchy and didn’t have the motor skills for scratching.  I began to vomit breast milk that had curdled in my stomach.  It was over one hundred degrees, and humid in the forest-filled hills of southeastern Oklahoma.  My mother stopped to rest on a flat rock stair leading to the cave.  My dad urged her onward, “it will be cooler for her in the cave,” he reassured her.

When the crevice came into view, dark and green with moss, he handed me over to my mother.  I was now screaming also from hunger, having thrown up the contents of my immature stomach.  She slipped into the crack of the cave and heard water.  She placed a hand against the wall for balance, first checking for snakes or scorpions, and she was immediately relieved by the cold walls.  She found a place where the cave wall jutted toward the stream of water and perched there.  She turned to my father.  “Ready?” he asked, and she nodded.  He held up the suit jacket he had almost left behind over the entrance to the cave and guarded her modesty with his body.

She needed to relax for her milk to let down, so she closed her eyes to the screaming and listened to the trickling throughout the cave.  She nestled the back of her neck against the hard but cold surface of the cave wall and silently prayed for relief.  She took off all of my clothes but my diaper and laid them on a rock.  My screaming became intermittent as I took in the sounds that she took in, as I noted in my own way, the temperature change.  The trickling continued as I gave up the fight and turned toward her nipple.  After several minutes of silence, my dad might have whispered, “how’s it going?” and she might have responded by saying things were good, and that she would just sit a bit longer to make sure I kept the milk down.

Today I have an air conditioner in my car.  It is November.  My grandfather has died.  I stop at Robbers’ Cave to show my son, who is weaned, where I was nursed as an infant.  My partner takes photos of us, me with my hand against the mossy wall; Stormy standing next to me with the requisite smile.  Stormy begins to shiver, so after a few more pictures we head back down the flint slabs to our car.  We head toward the funeral.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but nothing is greater than this