Cheaters Never Prosper

Yeah, yeah. It's a cliché. I'm sure we can all think of someone who cheated and prospered plenty, primarily because they were never caught. However, when it comes to diabetes, cheating on your diet without taking the proper precautions will eventually catch up to you.

I mentioned last post that I learned how to cheat on my diet right under the noses of the people responsible for making sure that I didn't cheat. The analytics of my blog have taken a dive and no one has commented, so I figured I'd just make my way through the list. But not necessarily in order. No, that wouldn't be any fun. I'm still just going to go with whatever I'm in the mood to write until someone makes a suggestion otherwise. So nyah! 😛

Back in the before times, when cell phones were an impossible dream and video games could only be found in arcades, my father became a member of The Suburban Players. This was a community theater group that would put on productions just a few short steps upward from high school quality. They may not have been the best shows ever performed, but they had fun.

In 1977, the musical they chose was Mame. The show has a character named Patrick Dennis. Patrick is 10 years old in the first act and an adult in the second act. And you'll never guess who was 10 years old that year!

That's right! It was me! (I made it really difficult to guess, didn't I?)

Me and a dozen other kids auditioned for the role. In the race for the role, I placed second, (making me the first loser). I was disappointed, but I was also 10, so it wasn't the end of the world.

And then the director and producer of the group realized that the kid they'd cast was actually a giant. They'd given the supporting role of Agnes to a sweet woman who was about 5' 2". In the very first scene, the characters of Agnes and Patrick are supposed to be lost in New York, and they pause for a musical number... as one does when lost in Manhattan. But the boy who got the role of Patrick was growing like a weed. He was already about four inches taller than Agnes and still growing.

So guess who replaced him! (Yeah, I'm terrible at setting up a mystery.)

For three months, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening was rehearsal. Blocking, singing, and choreography. Ummm... When I use the word "choreography," I'm using the word VERY loosely. As a group, the Suburban Players could sing and act. But dance...? Not to save their lives! Me included! After those three months, it was showtime.

Totally unrelated to diabetes care, but entertaining... The most flattering compliment about my performance came during these rehearsals, and this compliment wasn't given with words, but with actions. The role of Mame was played by a woman named Marian. The character was supposed to perform in a show within the show and do so badly that she gets fired after her first performance. That's when adorable little me, carrying a bouquet of roses, stepped into the scene to lift her spirits with the song, My Best Girl. Every time - EVERY SINGLE TIME! - Marian would start to cry because she thought it was so sweet. And there was out director, Marty, shouting at her, "MARIAN, STOP CRYING! WE CAN'T AFFORD WATERPROOF MAKEUP!" 🤣

[/boasting]

As mentioned previously, I was taking only two injections a day. It was a mix of NPH (Neutral Protamine Hagedorn) and Regular insulin. What made it "regular?" No idea. I just know it was called "Regular." I took a larger dose during the day to cover the majority of my meals - breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack - and a smaller dose to cover dinner and evening snack. For the record, the evening dose was about half the size of the morning dose.

Opening night, I was an uncontrolled ball of nerves. I'd been singing in front of the cast for months, but now I'd be performing in front of 300 strangers. ~ Gulp! ~ In my nervousness, I accidentally took my larger morning dose at night. And in case you've forgotten, being extra active makes insulin work harder. Even if I wasn't going to sing and dance, the adrenaline pumping through me would be enough to keep my blood racing through the night.

As luck would have it, one of our cast members was a pediatrician by day. My parents consulted him about what should be done to counter my accidental insulin overdose, to which he suggested - brace yourself - Twinkies. There wasn't time to feed me an entire meal to counter the higher insulin dose, so he recommended I just down a couple of Twinkies as a shortcut.

Can you see what just happened? Yes? No? Maybe?

I - a diabetic for three years up to that point - had been taught to absolutely hate my disease with every fiber of my being by the incubator and two years at a summer camp full of tyrants... had just learned that the "threat" of hypoglycemia warranted an opportunity to "legally cheat" on my diet. And because there was no way to instantly verify this back in the day, my minders had to take my word for it. Remember, this was still the time of urine tests, which were notoriously unreliable in terms of blood glucose management. Home blood testing was still years away. As far as 10-year-old me was concerned, I'd been granted carte blanche to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It's really not the kind of thing you want to teach a less than emotionally stable diabetic.

Technically, that was the beginning of me pushing the boundaries of my diet off a proverbial cliff. This was the foundation to many of my hospitalizations, as mentioned in my post from 25 July 2022. By then, of course, I didn't have to lie to people around me. I could take my allowance money and buy the garbage I shouldn't have been eating without anyone being the wiser.

There's a different philosophy toward diabetic diets now. "Take enough insulin to cover your terrible eating habits." You don't have to lie and sneak around. Just be honest with yourself AND your doctor. They might not be happy with what you eat, but knowing you're actually paying attention to your blood sugars and adjusting your insulin doses accordingly will keep them from berating you. I'm still not a doctor, but I AM a diabetic whose Hgb A1c has been between 6.0 and 7.0 for the last eight years, with the last one being 6.5. So just as I said near the start... nyah! 😛

Okay. Here we go. Beautiful young woman... scantily clad... aaaaand GO!

Oh, great. I try to share a picture

of a beautiful, scantily clad woman

and wind up sharing a Link instead.