The ups and downs along the diabetic turnpike

Published 12/20/05

With a sugar cookie in one hand and a piece of peanut butter fudge in the other, I’m celebrating a smooth—relatively smooth—year of diabetes management through insulin pump therapy.

I’ve been in therapy for nearly a year now, wired to an insulin pump that gives me a continuous rate of insulin throughout the day, just like my old pump, my pancreas, used to do before it crashed and turned me into a statistic. That is, one of 20 million Americans with insulin dependent diabetes.

With a pump clipped to my pants or discreetly hidden in any of the ten pockets of my cargo pants, I can program my insulin delivery based on whether I’m fruitcake loading at yet another Christmas party, whether I’m exercising or exercising my option to remain sedentary and whether my current blood glucose readings are normal or rising and falling like a roller coaster. With an insulin pump, I don’t have to duck into a dark alley and shoot up with syringes anymore like we used to do in the Dark Ages.

I had almost made it through the year without incident until the week before last. That’s when I jumped in the car and headed to Washington, D.C., to pick up my son, antsy to return from a semester in the nation’s capital. It was to be a quick 10 hours out and 10 hours back, a day trip and less. No eyeballing honest Abe at the Lincoln Memorial or shopping at the National Mall, just out and back.

But somewhere on the way out, a connecting piece on my insulin pump worked itself loose, my insulin pump quit pumping insulin and my blood sugars began a steep, steady climb. By the time I hit the Beltway, my insulin deficit needed the administration’s attention.

Now, I’ve suffered from elevated blood sugars over a 24 hour period, due to vacation, irregular work schedules or holiday gluttony, but I’ve never become violently ill. So the nausea, as nausea tends to do, took me by surprise as we left D.C. and headed up through Maryland in search of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. But it was the barfing through the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania that got my attention, as well as those riding with me, no doubt

My doctor tells me—now he tells me—that whether you’re heading to the nation’s capital or not, you should treat your diabetes as if you’re on high terror alert. In other words, you should always be prepared for an emergency. Packing your supplies is the best way to be smarter than the disease. Fifty miles southeast of Pittsburgh, while we edged along at 20 miles per hour in a blinding snowstorm, I realized that I was dumb and dumber than the disease. With each breath becoming more difficult and more painful, I thought I was having a heart attack.

On the ambulance ride to the hospital, I asked the EMT where we were. “Kyle” told me we were in Somerset and welcomed me to “Disaster Central.” That is, we were just miles from Johnstown, site of one of the worst disasters in our nation’s history in 1889 when a flood wiped out a working class city, killing 2209. Just miles from the site of a coal mine that trapped nine miners for 77 hours in 2002. And, most famously, just miles from the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the last of the four planes hijacked on 9/11, originally en route to San Francisco from Newark, and believed to be headed back to D.C., possibly the White House, on a terrorist mission.

While the EMT and all of history confirmed that I was indeed in Somerset, Pa., my doctor tells me I was heading towards the town of “ketoacidosis,” a condition in which blood sugars are out of control, the body becomes poisoned and you’re just an exit away from a diabetic coma.

Fortunately, the nurses and doctors at Somerset Hospital treated me with medication, insulin, fluids, x-rays and a battery of other tests, and had me back on the road—well, back to the motel—by three in the morning. It was a straight shot the next day, off the mountains, through the tip of West Virginia, and across Ohio.

Back home again in Indiana, I was ready for a session in insulin pump therapy.

The Writer’s Almanac is a gift worth re-gifting

Published 12/13/05

I cannot tell a lie. This Christmas I’m doing a bit of re-gifting. Re-gifting, of course, is a decades-old tradition whereby you re-send a gift once forwarded to you. So, as was once addressed to me, I’m sending readers to writersalmanac.publicradio.org where you can pick up a gift that will give until oil company executives grow a conscience.

After subscribing at the above link, what will arrive in your e-mail inbox stocking each morning is your very own free copy of The Writer’s Almanac.

Now wait a minute, kids. Before you feel like you’ve gotten the short end of the Christmas straw, let me tell you why I believe you are getting an extremely thoughtful gift.

First of all, The Writer’s Almanac is a project of Garrison Keillor, a master storyteller known for warming audiences up with words like, “It’s been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegone.” Keillor is the host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” heard on National Public Radio as are excerpts of The Writer’s Almanac. In fact, each almanac comes with an audio version.

Whether audio or Web page format, The Writer’s Almanac highlights important dates in history, frequently giving them an interesting twist. Like this one: “On this day in 1930, a Swedish newspaper telephoned Sinclair Lewis to tell him that he was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, for his novel Main Street (1920). Lewis thought the caller was making a practical joke and began to imitate the man’s accent. But it was not a joke. Lewis was, in fact, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

In July, the Almanac marked the birthday of the man of the pond, Henry David Thoreau. The Writer’s Almanac recalled an incident from Henry David’s brief stint as a teacher: “When criticized by the supervisor of the local public school for not using corporal punishment on his students, Thoreau thrashed a random group of his pupils to illustrate the senselessness of it all and resigned from the school.”

Then there was the anniversary of the publishing of the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. According to the Almanac, Hawthorne more or less test-marketed the book on his wife. “When he finished the last chapter, he read it aloud to his wife. He said the tragic ending broke her heart and sent her to bed with a terrible headache, which he considered a great success,” notes the newsletter, which goes on to say that The Scarlet Letter was indeed a success, selling out its first printing in ten days before eventually being recognized as a masterpiece of American literature.

Another issue celebrated the anniversary of the loss of a major battle by that great French emperor and general Napoleon Bonaparte. The entry noted that Napoleon was an impatient personality even as a young man and that “he once went to see a hot air balloon launch, and when the launch was delayed, he walked up and cut the balloon loose with a penknife because he was tired of waiting around.”

While a historical note may be about a Visigoth victory and the fall of the Roman Empire, on other occasions, it may hit closer to home, as on October 2, 1997, when the Writer’s Almanac reported, “The Riley Festival, celebrating Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, starts today in Greenfield, Ind.”

Sometimes the highlights of the day hit a little too close to home, such as this one: “It’s the birthday of journalist and novelist Robert Ruark, born in Wilmington, North Carolina (1915). He started out as a newspaper columnist who wrote about his travels around the world. He claimed to be able to write a column in 11 minutes. He once finished 16 columns in a single day.”

Frankly, I almost cancelled my subscription to the Writer’s Almanac after that one but hopefully these dates in history won’t hit that close to home for you.
Each edition also includes a short poem or two—the kind you used to enjoy before poetry became a private club.

Wrapped as it will be among your daily servings of spam, your Nigerian fraud letters and other unsolicited junk messages, The Writer’s Almanac will be your breath of fresh morning air.

Each almanac ends with nine words worth repeating and re-gifting, which I will.

“Be well, do good work and keep in touch.”

Readers, did you know…the story behind his song?

Published 12/6/05

Turn on the radio, attend a school holiday concert or slip into a pew during Advent and you’re bound to hear a verse or two of the now-familiar song, “Mary, Did You Know?”

Composed by a guy named Mark Lowry, the song has translated successfully across a variety of musical genres.

Depending on where your musical tastes take you in the record store, you’ll find covers of the song by American Idol performer Clay Aiken; pop and jazz artist Natalie Cole; opera singer Kathleen Battle; a who’s who of country artists, including Reba McEntire, Kathy Mattea, Billy Dean and the duet of Wynonna Judd and Kenny Rogers; gospel music’s Gaither Vocal Band and Michael English; and the artist formerly known for his puppy love, Donnie Osmond. Whenever the song is mentioned today, the words “modern classic” are usually close by.

Mark Lowry was four years out of college and an unknown when, in 1984, he wrote the words that would make him a lyricist to remember. In their first rendering, the lyrics were just lines to a musical that he wrote for his church. Written in the form of questions, they were part of a monologue to be recited between scenes of the play.

As his inspiration, Mark mused on what might have been going through the mind of the mother of Jesus, and used the song as an occasion to ask her. Thus, we have…“Mary, did you know, that your baby boy will one day walk on water?” and “Mary, did you know, that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?”

It wasn’t until six years after he wrote these lines that Mark, now establishing his reputation as a joking baritone with the Gaither Vocal Band, handed his tune-less lyrics to fellow artist Buddy Greene.

The rest is Christmas music history.

The completion of the song was just one accomplishment in a career that included a 13-year run with the Alexandria-based Gaither Vocal Band.

Mark was in his Gaither Vocal Band phase in the late ’90s when I met him and wrote his media kit. Not that he needed a media kit. By the time I met him, he had been profiled by most of the major media outlets including People magazine.

To interview him for our project, I had to become his driver one day. The plan was for me to pick him up at an Anderson hotel and deliver him to a rehearsal location, squeezing questions in somewhere in between. When I arrived at his hotel room, I found a door that was ajar, a TV blasting and the composer of “Mary, Did You Know?” in a daze under the covers. When I woke him, he jumped out of bed, fully clothed, including jacket and shoes. He then explained to me that he had returned from Europe the previous day and was still lagging, jet wise. I reminded him of what state of the U.S. we were in and escorted him to the taxi.

Ironically enough, ten minutes into our ride, a local radio station began to play one of his songs. Wondering what it must be like to hear yourself singing on the radio, I looked at him knowingly. But, mentally, Mark was still waiting for a connecting flight and asked me, “Is that David Gates? Is that Bread?”

Sometime later, when I worked with him on a photo book, I had to request several family photos from his mother, prints which I returned after the project delivered. The next time I saw Mark, I went up to him and asked him to thank his mother for the use of the photos. He looked at me a minute and then said, “Do I know you?” It was then I realized that Mark, who was touring the country, had probably met a few other reporter-types since the last time he slept. And in his clothes perhaps.

Through the years, Mark has starred in comedy and music videos, written children’s books and produced an Internet comedy show. (In his latest incarnation, he’s the organizer of “Senior Trips”—for “seniors” over 50. These three day events include music, comedy and activities such as the “Don’t Tell the Preacher Big Band Dance.”) But if you ask him, he prefers to be called a “storyteller.”

Even so, the genius behind “Mary Did You Know?” is a human interest item himself.