NO BIG DEAL

By: C. Saphir

Courtesy of Mishpacha magazine

“So, remember last date I told you that there was something I needed to discuss with you?” Of course I remembered. I had actually been quite curious when Yosef mentioned that he needed to discuss something with me. Was it a hashkafah issue? Was it about money? Was it - could it be – something to do with us?

There, sitting across from me in the hotel lounge, he said, “I have diabetes. Do you know what that is?”

I felt my knees go wobbly. Of course I knew what diabetes was. My father’s boss was diabetic, and he had to have his legs amputated. A short time later he died of diabetes-related complications. I also knew that diabetics had severely restricted diets and weren’t allowed to have any sugar.

In my mind, I watched my dream of finally getting married burst like an overinflated balloon. I knew I couldn’t marry a man who was unwell, with a limited future. Yosef looked fine on the outside, but now that he had told me the truth, I realized it was all an illusion.

Yosef was waiting for me to respond. “Diabetes,” I said carefully. “That’s pretty serious.”

“A lot of progress has been made with diabetes,” Yosef explained. “So much so, that nowadays diabetics can eat whatever they want, whenever they want. As a matter of fact, a diabetic today can live as long as a nondiabetic and be just as healthy.

“Most people’s bodies produce insulin naturally,” he continued. “So I give it to myself manually, no big deal. My condition can’t affect you at all, don’t worry.”

I shifted in my seat. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about this. I also need to discuss it with my parents, and maybe with my old principal, Rebbetzin Grossman.”

“Would you like me to discuss it with your parents directly?”

“I guess,” I said.

I called home and told my parents that Yosef had something to discuss with them.

My parents were waiting anxiously when we walked in, and they were hardly thrilled when Yosef broke the news to them.

“There’s a little machine called a glucometer that I carry in my pocket,” he told them. “Before I eat, I use a small lancet to extract a tiny bit of blood, I put the blood on the machine, and I get a number. Based on that number, I give myself insulin to match whatever I want to eat – and that’s it!”

I watched my parents’ faces carefully, and I could tell they were as dubious as I was. “My boss had diabetes, and he was a very sick man,” my father commented.

Yosef was unfazed. “Medical studies today show that if a diabetic takes care of himself and takes the insulin he’s supposed to, he can live a long, healthy life. Before the days of glucometers, people didn’t know how much insulin to take, so they stayed on strict diets and eventually developed complications. But that’s not the case today.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper. “Either way,” he continued. “you’re welcome to speak to my doctor. His phone number is on this paper.”

My mother had a long talk with the doctor. Who confirmed everything that Yosef had said. He also assured her that Yosef was responsible about his health and that there was no reason to be alarmed.

“What about the genetic factor?” my mother asked. “Will his children be more likely to have diabetes?”

“If a certain gene is present in both parents, then yes, it can be hereditary,” the doctor answered.

I decided to get myself tested for the gene. Before I called to schedule the test, however, I got a call from Rebbetzin Grossman. I had called her to discuss this shidduch a couple of weeks earlier, when things were just getting started, and she had helped to dispel a couple of minor reservations that I had. Now, she wanted to know how the shidduch was progressing.

I was touched, and a bit surprised, that she had cared enough to call me. Rebbetzin Grossman was a busy person, and it wasn’t like her to initiate this type of conversation. But now that she had, I went ahead and told her about the diabetes. “From what we’re hearing,” I said, “it seems that it’s not as big a deal as I originally thought. But I want to make sure that my children are not going to be at risk, so I’m having myself tested for the diabetes gene.”

“I hear your concern,” she said. “I’m just thinking, if it’s not a big deal to live with diabetes, then why do you have to be scared of your children having it? If that happens, you know you can deal with it.”

I thought about what she said, and it made sense to me. If I can live with a husband who has diabetes, I reasoned, I can live with a child who has diabetes.

I didn’t get tested. A few days later, I went out with Yosef again.

“I have a little confession to make,” he said to me during the date. “I called Rebbetzin Grossman right after our date last week to explain what was going on, and I asked her to encourage you to go ahead with the shidduch.”

Aha! So that explained the rebbetzin’s call. I was a bit taken aback that Yosef had contacted Rebbetzin Grossman - was this some sort of conspiracy to push me into getting engaged?

No, I decided. I made the decision myself. The rebbetzin just helped me clarify the genetic testing issue, and I’m comfortable with her approach.

My dismay that Yosef had spoken to the rebbetzin behind my back quickly turned to admiration. How many guys would call a girl’s mentor to get her to say yes? I mused. That takes guts, and a lot of confidence.

By the end of that date, we were engaged.

Yosef was right – his diabetes didn’t affect me at all. In fact, after our third child was born, I asked him to start giving himself insulin if front of the children. “This way,” I said, “if one of our kids ever has to take insulin, they’ll think it’s normal.”

From then on, Yosef started to check his numbers and give himself injections at the dinner table. It was just part of the routine.

One day, I got a call from my three-year-old daughter Tzippy’s morah. “Tzippy’s going to the bathroom a lot,” she said, “I think you should check it out.” I brought Tzippy to the pediatrician, and a quick urine test confirmed that Tzippy had diabetes.

I panicked. Help! How am I going to deal with a second case of diabetes in my house?

The same way you’ve been dealing with the first one, I answered myself. Calmly, and without dramatics, this is something you were prepared for, remember? You decided not to do the genetic testing because diabetes is something you can live with, and now you’ll just continue living with it.

That same day, I took Tzippy to an endocrinologist to get her started on insulin. When we came home, she boasted to her siblings, “I have a machine just like Abba does!” She was all excited to show it off.

A diabetes educator taught me how to pull insulin into a syringe and inject it into Tzippy’s arm or thigh. After about four doses, the feeling of the injection stopped bothering her.

Having a child with diabetes was very different from having a husband with diabetes. Until then, I had only watched Yosef check his numbers and give himself insulin, but now I had to do it a few times a day for Tzippy. Figuring out how much insulin to give her before each meal was tough in the beginning, but eventually I got it down pat. I even invented code words so that we could talk about diabetes in public. The name of the condition was “numbers.” Drawing blood was called “clicking.” Blood test results were “scores.” Insulin types were referred to by the letter they began with: Humalog insulin was called “H,” NovoLog was called “N,”

Like Yosef, Tzippy was able to eat anything she wanted, as long as she matched the food with insulin to cover. With time, it became as natural as brushing her teeth.

One day, my son was talking about a boy in his class who had a nut allergy. “Allergies are worse than numbers,” he reflected, “because with allergies, you can never eat some kinds of foods, but with numbers, you can just give yourself insulin and eat whatever you want.”

When Tzippy entered first grade, I called the principal to inform her about Tzippy’s condition.

“What?” she exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me about this when you registered her last year. I don’t know if we would have accepted her. A child like that needs a full-time health aide!”

“Out insurance won’t cover such a thing,” I responded, “and that’s probably because it’s not necessary. I can’t afford to pay a full-time aide, but if you’re nervous, I’ll come to school with my daughter and stay with her until the teacher feels comfortable.”

The teacher, Mrs. Salomon, was quite dismayed when she learned that she had a diabetic child in her class. The first couple of days, she watched apprehensively as I measured Tzippy’s food. But by the end of the week, she felt silly having me sit there in class. “I think I can handle this,” she said.

Tzippy didn’t need injections in school, because she took a longer-acting insulin in the morning that kicked in for lunch as well. Mrs. Salomon had to know how much food Tzippy could eat each day – a daily phone call gave her that information – and she also had to know to gave Tzippy juice if she started to look pale, which was an indication that her blood sugar had dropped too low.

As Tzippy grew older, she became more able to care for herself, and she soon became tired of teachers worrying about her. Her third-grade teacher was so nervous having a diabetic child in the class that she asked her every hour, “Are you okay? How are you feeling?” Tzippy hated that.

Before she entered fourth grade, she begged me not to tell her teachers about her condition. With much hesitation, I agreed. I knew that this was risky, but I had to consider my daughter’s emotional development, not only her physical health. Besides, the principal and the school secretary knew what to do in case of an emergency.

At the end of that year, Tzippy’s teacher called me. “I must tell you what a brilliant and mature daughter you have,” she said. “In all my 22 years of teaching, I have never met such a child. Last week, the girls had to write a composition about what they want to be when they grow up. Most of them wrote that they wanted to be a teacher, a speech therapist, a mother – but your daughter wrote that she wanted to be an endocrinologist! Which fourth-grader even knows what that is? I’m amazed by how well read she is.”

When I hung up the phone, I had a good laugh.

Over the years, we had a few scares. Three times we had to call Hatzalah because Tzippy fainted, and each time we had to figure out what had gone wrong to make sure it didn’t happen again. Once, she was too busy to eat during the day, so she didn’t have enough sugar in her system. Another time, the insulin hadn’t been absorbed because she had been injecting herself in the same place on her skin each time, and a callous had developed in that spot.

These were aberrations, though on the whole, Tzippy was no different from my other kids, who had to be rushed to the emergency room on the rare occasion with cuts, broken bones, or high fever.

Tzippy went to camp without any problems. Her best friend, Aviva, knew about her condition, but none of the other girls did.

The junior high school Tzippy attended was separate from her elementary school, and by then, we had long stopped telling the education staff about her condition. When she graduated eighth grade and was getting ready for her graduation trip I insisted that she tell the principal, Mrs. Blumenthal, so that she would allow Tzippy to sleep in the same room as Aviva in case there would be an emergency.

That day, I got a call form an incredulous Mrs. Blumenthal. “When your daughter told me that she’s diabetic, I thought she was pulling my leg!” she said. “I looked up her medical records, and there it was, black on white. But how could I not have known?”

“Since fourth grade, Tzippy wanted us to keep it very quiet,” I explained. “She’s very responsible, so we respected her wishes.”

“But how does she take care of herself without anyone knowing?”

“It’s pretty simple,” I answered. “She tests herself in the bathroom. If she feels her sugar levels getting low in the middle of class, she puts her head down on her desk and pops a candy into her mouth.”

“You know,” she said, “there’s another child in the school who’s diabetic, and her mother keeps telling me that it’s a life-threatening illness and we need to take it seriously. Are you talking about the same condition?”

I laughed. “It’s all about how you look at it,” I said.

When Tzippy was 17, she was reading a newspaper, and she came across an article about an organization that makes Shidduchim for people with serious medical issues. Suddenly, I heard her gasp. “Ma, listen to this,” she said, and began to read aloud: “Rivka suffered so much in her life, ever since she was diagnosed with diabetes at age 10. Between having to make herself bleed each time she wants to eat, giving herself painful injections multiple times a day, and grappling with a whole host of medical issues, Rivka’s suffering knows no end.”

The article went on to describe how the organization helps poor, suffering young adults like Rivka find other sick people to marry.

Tzippy was stunned. “According to this, I’m in the same category as a cancer patient!”

Until then, she had never thought of herself as sick; she simply gave herself insulin instead of producing it inside her body.

“The writer of the article is just being dramatic,” I reassured her. “She obviously has never lived with someone who has type 1 diabetes.”

A month later, she mentioned the article again. “Is there something seriously wrong with me?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I replied. “People are afraid of diabetes because they are ignorant about it. They remember their old grandmother who died from it and they don’t know that today, diabetics don’t have to be sick.”

The third time she brought up the issue, she said, “Ma, I hope you don’t think I’m going to have an easy time in Shidduchim, because I have diabetes.” She said it with a tone of self-pity that I had never heard from her before and was not going to tolerate.

“Look,” I retorted, “your father is diabetic, and he married a top girl, if I may say so myself!”

Tzippy groaned good-naturedly.

“Hashem runs the world,” I continued, “and when He decides you should meet your bashert, He’ll make sure the boy doesn’t find out about it ahead of time. By the time you tell him, he’ll trust you when you explain to him that it’s not a big deal – the same that happened with Abba and me.”

That calmed her down.

Tzippy’s first date ever was with a refined, intelligent young man named Menachem. The moment I met him, I knew he was perfect for her.

When the dating got serious, she told him about the diabetes. His reaction was, “So what?”

His parents were more concerned, but Menachem kept insisting, “She just takes insulin manually instead of producing it internally.”His parents have their blessing to the shidduch, and a couple of months ago, Tzippy and Menachem got married.

I hope that Tzippy’s children won’t have to grapple with diabetes. But if they do, I’m sure they’ll manage beautifully, just as Yosef and Tzippy do. Because, to me at least, it really is no big deal.