Sunday, December 14, 2008
Quick, Life, "Stop the Presses"

The big D

“Your face is so thin,” she said. “Are you sick or something?”

By Kevin Moreau

It started with a few compliments, mostly from people I hadn’t seen in awhile.

“Have you lost a little weight?” friends and colleagues would ask.

“That’s what they tell me,” I’d say. But I didn’t feel all that different. And despite my constant pledges to do so, I hadn’t started exercising again, or altered my (admittedly poor) diet in any meaningful way. So I just shrugged it off.

The next clue came when I had to get reading glasses. I didn’t think too much about that, either. After all, I’d just turned 41. Deteriorating vision just seemed to come with the territory.

Then the comments started increasing in frequency. An editorial intern walked into my office and did a double-take. “Your face is so thin,” she said. “Are you sick or something?” I’d last seen her a mere three weeks ago.

Soon after, my wife and I went shopping for clothes and discovered I’d gone down two shirt sizes. That night, I stepped on a scale for the first time in ages and discovered I’d lost almost 80 pounds in less than eight months. That’s when I called my doctor.

Three weeks and two rounds of blood tests later, I got the call I’d been expecting, the one I’d been dreading, had been telling myself would never come.

My name is Kevin Moreau, and I have diabetes.

I spent my first official day as a diabetic in a fog. It was a Thursday, which is the day The Sunday Paper goes to press. It’s a lot like surfing, as our small but talented (and dedicated) editorial and design staffs valiantly labor to ride the wave of eleventh-hour story changes, punctuality-challenged freelancers and last-minute crises without losing our balance. To top it off, that afternoon I was scheduled to interview Ludacris at the W hotel in Midtown Atlanta—and had to race back to the office to turn that 20-minute chat into that week’s cover story.

As I sat next to one of my favorite entertainers in a gorgeous hotel suite overlooking the city, chatting animatedly about his exciting career, I felt a discomfiting sense of “otherness”—as if I’d been inducted into some frightening and mysterious society. I also felt a kind of wondrous anticipation, like a reporter embarking on his very first assignment, or a professional athlete who’s just been traded to a foreign city. Part of my brain, as usual, was juggling the assorted tasks still left to take care of that afternoon. And on top of all that, one thought echoed over and over, coloring everything else: “Your life is about to change in ways you can’t even yet imagine.”

Two months later, my life is still changing, and every day feels a little like that first one, as I continue to process new information, to factor new data into my daily routine.

But as the weeks pile up, changes that once seemed seismic in scope—like sticking myself with a needle to inject a dose of insulin every night, or pricking my finger three times a day to test my glucose levels—have settled into something approaching the mundane. And some adjustments I thought would be major have turned out to be pretty trauma-free. I barely even miss the office candy bowl I used to faithfully stock with bite-size Butterfingers, Snickers and Baby Ruths, or the heaping bowls of pasta I loved to make, or the greasy fried chicken I sometimes consumed three times a week.

I still have a lot to learn. I know now that diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or efficiently use insulin, which converts sugars, starches and other foods into energy. But I don’t even know yet whether I’m Type 1 or Type 2 (my endocrinologist is apparently so popular it takes more than a month to get an appointment, which I’m taking as a good sign). 

But living with what I’ve started calling “the big D” has had its share of pluses as well as minuses. Those insulin injections mean my body’s once again processing sugar at normal levels, but they've also added back 15 pounds. Still, 180 pounds is a damn sight more manageable than 240, which sat awkwardly on my 5-foot, 7-inch frame. I can’t eat whatever I want whenever I want anymore. But my blood-sugar levels have come down from a high somewhere in the 500s to a nice, consistent plateau anywhere between 90 and 120, so I’m OK with that.

And knowing that, according to the American Diabetes Association, there are some 23.6 million Americans—that’s almost 8 percent of the population—who’ve been where I am makes that still-lingering feeling of “otherness” a little less frightening and mysterious. I’m riding a different wave now. And so far, I’m keeping my balance. SP

Kevin Forest Moreau is Editor in Chief of The Sunday Paper.