CHANGING HABITS

It seems like a thousand years ago that I was first diagnosed with diabetes. I know that it wasn’t because B-O-B does not spell Methuselah. It was closer to 16 years ago, when, after some routine blood work, I was told that the doctor wanted me to see an endocrinologist because he suspected diabetes. I went to see the endoc and, sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed. I was a Type 2 diabetic and I had some serious changes to make. I walked out of his office a little slower, head down, not wanting eye contact with anyone, and sat in my car without starting it for what seemed top be an hour. What did this mean? I didn’t know very much about diabetes other than stories I had been told by friends whose grandparents had lost a foot or needed a kidney transplant or died because of complications from it. Naïve is a kind word to describe how much I knew. I saw this as a death sentence and, in a moment of self indulgence, I cried. Why me? I was never overweight, I was not a junk food glutton and nobody in my family was diabetic. Why me? I cried some more. A number of years earlier, when my first wife and I had divorced, I remember thinking about the choices I had to make. Did I go to a bar, get drunk and cry in my proverbial beer or did I turn the car in another direction, go to the gym, get in shape and start dating again? I contemplated that choice for about 10 minutes before I found myself throwing out what became my last pack of cigarettes, “pumping iron” and getting ready for a date. It wasn’t long before I found my true soul mate - the woman I have now been married to for 18 years. This was no different. I had to make some hard choices. I went home and told my wife, through the tears, that I was diabetic. She had just returned to our home in Dallas after flying to Chicago to give her brother a kidney, so, her initial response was, “Ouch, this hurts,” but, being the bastion of strength that she has always been, within moments, she was getting proactive about my situation. My wife grew up in an African-American family and community that deep fried a lot of food, so it was only natural that we ate foods that were prepared in the “Fry Daddy.” I grew up in a Jewish-American family where the foods contained a lot of salt, which I had backed off from years earlier because I didn’t want “the gout.” The “Fry Daddy” was the first thing to go. She threw it in the trash and started to researched menus where it wasn’t necessary to fry everything in gallons of oil. We would fight this thing together. We found recipes that were amazingly more delicious than fried or salty foods and so began our culinary journey. It didn’t take long before I dropped what little extra weight I had and she found herself having to buy smaller clothing. Within about 6 months, I had come off all diabetes meds and was feeling terrific. We have never gone back to our old ways. We continue to eat the right things, cooked the right way. I take Metformin again, but, only because I had a bit of a setback during a recent move and the “stress” caused the numbers to get a bit out of whack. But our proactivity as regards diabetes has simply become our way of life; our comfort zone. Just the other night, while eating dinner, my wife made me realize that my diabetes has been a blessing for our entire family. We have been eating healthy for so long now that my 17 year old daughter just can’t eat junk food or drink soda. She doesn’t like candy and prefers to “snack” on fruits and vegetables. For her, it is just the way things are. This was nothing that she had to “learn the hard way.” I still, however, wondered how I could possibly be diabetic with no weight problems and no genetic disposition. We may, however, have found the answer. When I was forced out of a job I had been doing for 25 years, I lost my insurance and had to start getting my medical treatment at the VA. I went into the service in 1966 and was sent to Vietnam in 1968, where I spent nearly 2 years, landing back in San Francisco in January of 1970. While there, I handled huge drums of chemicals that were to be sprayed over the Vietnamese country side for defoliation purposes. They gave the chemicals names of colors. The orange drums were dubbed - Agent Orange. I was informed, by the VA, that exposure to Agent Orange has been known to cause a number of problems and that Type 2 diabetes was recognized as one of them. I have no complaints about being diabetic. It has caused me, and consequently, all of those around me, to eat, think and act healthy. I have walked two of my daughters down the aisle. I have two more daughters and two granddaughters and I plan to be there for them as well. I wrote a bumper sticker a while back, that says - “Eat Like a Diabetic and You’ll Never Become One.”

LET'S MAKE SOME NOISE

A lot of people have been making a lot of noise lately about a lot of things. That hasn’t really changed much over the years, but technology now allows us to disseminate all of it so much easier and more quickly than ever before. It’s gotten a lot noisier and, in some cases, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We are subjected to a steady stream of “news” from the time we get up until the time we go to bed. 24 hour “news” channels, social media, the internet - the list goes on and on - and everything we know about everything that’s going on around us is fed to us, be it subliminal or superluminal. The media is responsible for a lot of the perceptions we leave the house with every day. So, it comes as no surprise to me that the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman has become the media circus it has. Why would Zimmerman follow Martin in the first place? His perception that a black kid dressed this way had to be up to no good. The media is directly responsible for his reasoning to begin with. The noise being created by this case has reawaked a discussion about race in this country that is long overdue. A discussion that should have ended a long time ago, except that the only images most people have had of black teens over the years have been firmly implanted by media portrayals. Watch your local news and count the stories about violent crime that involve people of color and weigh them against the stories about crime involving whites. Would Zimmerman have acted the way he did had those images not been prevalent? Maybe! But, his preconceived idea that this black teenager, dressed the way he was, was up to no good, may have pushed him faster. What do you do when you see a group of teens of color coming your way on the sidewalk? Do you cross the street? Probably. Do you clutch your purse a little tighter when you get on an elevator with a person of color? It’s probably not even a conscious response, but, I’ll bet you do. Many Americans have not been exposed to people of African origin throughout the rest of the world. Have you ever met any African-Germans, African-Italians, African-Chinese or, for that matter, African-Africans. All members of their respective societies at all strata of life. We seem to be the only place where a group of people is trapped in such a narrow definition. We like to think that we’ve come a long way in closing our racial gap to where all Americans are seen as Americans - cultural differences being the icing on our melting pot cake, but even though we finally elected a President of color, we’re not even close. Justice is still blind for a large portion of our citizenry and the double standard is, perhaps worse than ever. Tyler Perry a very powerful media mogul and filmmaker was recently racially profiled. He wrote, "It was so hostile. I was so confused. It was happening so fast that I could easily see how this situation could get out of hand very quickly. I didn't feel safe at all." It wasn’t until an African-American cop pulled up and suddenly got an “Oh, no” look on his face and told the other officers what they had done did he feel some semblance of relief. He now says he believes that racial profiling should be classified as a “hate crime.” I don’t necessarily disagree. Closer to home, my son, who has brown skin (my wife is Black - I am not), was pulled over 2-3 times a week in our own neighborhood. He spent 10 years in private school and grew up in a walled community in a very nice Dallas suburb, but, the cops had e preconceived notion that he didn’t belong. Granted, I thought a hoodie and baggy, sagging pants looked ridiculous. They looked as stupid to me as bell bottoms, long hair and a dashiki looked to my parents, but, it’s just clothing and that’s how teens define themselves in order to find themselves. My son is now finishing the last year of a 7-10 year incarceration (a first offense) in North Carolina for a very stupid decision, not unlike many of the decisions most of us make at 21. The white kid who was involved, to the same degree as my son had political connections and walked….scott free. It made me see the “double standard” from a whole new perspective. Richard Pryor put it best - “Is is “justice” or “just us?” This isn’t to say strides haven’t been made in the way the media portrays all of us and the way we see each other. In the 50’s my parents knew where they, as Jews, would be allowed to buy a home. Although any minority that has the advantage of white skin could always “pass” when necessary. My in-laws couldn’t even legally vote until 1965 - the year I graduated high school. We have a very long way to go. With the Martin/Zimmerman case making as much noise as it is, perhaps it will get a dialogue back under way that’s too important to ignore or push to the side under the presumption that things are fine and we are in a “post racial America.” Situations like this happen all the time, but this time, the media is, perhaps, playing a major role in healing some of the wounds it has helped to cause by making the noise that it is. Sometimes we have to make so much noise that everyone has to stand up and take notice. THAT’S HOW I FEEL………WHAT CAN I TELL YA’