Sweet Tooth

by Tim Anderson

  [Dawn enters Tim’s hospital room from stage right, wearing sunglasses, a tiara, and that stupid jean jacket.]

  Dawn: Tim, my sweet Tim. You look so weak. Have you lost weight?

  Tim: Yes, Dawn. Probably a whole waist size.

  Dawn: Oh, that’s just wonderful.

  Tim: Yes, I’m pretty thrilled.

  Dawn: But Tim, your body is a wreck. It is immobile and powerless. How will you ever satisfy my needs?

  Tim: Your needs? What do you mean? You’re not making any sense. It’s like you’re speaking a foreign language. Can you get me some Nabs?

  Dawn: I need a man, Tim. A man who can sweep me off my feet and paddleboat me around Shelley Lake.

  Tim: But Dawn, I almost die—

  Dawn: Shhh, Tim, don’t speak. I just can’t commit myself to a man whose pancreas is shooting blanks.

  Tim: Dawnie! Friend, Roman, countryman. My pancreas is fine. It’s just slowly dying is all.

  Dawn: I need a man with a fully functioning endocrine system, you know that.

  Tim: And I suppose Roger has one?

  Dawn: Yes, he does. [gestures toward the door and beckons Roger in] Come in, Roger darling. It’s OK. I’ve told him.

  [Roger enters wearing aviator glasses, a leather jacket, and white tennis shorts.]

  Roger: Hi, Tim. Sorry about your pancreas.

  Dawn: Roger is a freshman at State, and he’s currently taking care of his general college requirements before deciding on his major.

  Roger: I took a lot of AP classes, so…

  Tim: Wow. All that and a working pancre—

  Dawn: And he drives a Trans-Am.

  Tim: I’m getting my permit in October.

  Dawn: Too late, Tim. Too late.

  [Dawn and Roger slowly back out of the room, gazing into each other’s sunglasses.]

  Tim: But Dawn! What about my Nabs? And what about your brother?! Is he back from basic training yet?! Dawn! Tell him I said hi!…

  [And scene.]

  This was the closure I needed, and I was robbed of it. From my girlfriend I received no sympathy, not even a packet of cheese crackers with peanut butter in them. And I never saw her again. Since she went to a different school, there was no reason for me to. For all I know she and Roger robbed a bank and then paddleboated their way to the border. Which border? I guess I’ll never know.

  I’d had to digest a lot of information during that week at Rex Hospital in Raleigh—especially when, by all rights, I should have been sunning myself on an upstate New York lakeshore instead of lying in a hospital bed in Raleigh learning which of my fingers would deliver the best blood specimen. (The middle one.) Thankfully I had an excellent target for my scorn and teenage hatred during that hospital stay: my day nurse, Kimberly.

  Kimberly was my very own Nurse Ratched. She could not care less that I was terribly unhappy and lonely and sexually frustrated and also scared and newly diabetic. Didn’t give a fuck. She found me and my tedious emotions exceedingly boring.

  I knew I hated her from the very first time I pressed the CALL NURSE button and she stormed in and said, “What do you want? I’m busy!” This was a woman who didn’t let herself get too emotionally involved with her patients. Also, this was a woman who had a fuse as short as her unibrow was long.

  One morning she brought me a packet of information spelling out the indignities I was going to be subjected to for the rest of my life, beyond just the pricking of the fingers and the injecting of the insulin. This packet spelled out the lifestyle changes. The dietary restrictions, the daily regimen of prickings followed by shots followed an hour later by eating, the reduction in salty and potatoey snacks, the regular visits to medical specialists, the need to maintain consistency every day in what I ate, what I did, and the insulin dosages I took so that I wouldn’t throw my young but vulnerable body into a mad whirlpool of circulatory confusion.

  Kimberly stood next to me as I flipped through the packet and its various papers, and she answered my quivery questions with the compassionate concern of a Venus flytrap.

  At one point, I became overwhelmed with all the information coming at me, and I started tearing up. Yes, crying like a soft little girl. Kimberly sighed and handed me a tissue. As I wiped my eyes and tried to get my lip-wobbling under control I began to feel that maybe this would be our breakthrough moment. Her heart would be touched by my show of young fragility, she would take my hand, look into my eyes, and say, “Tim, it’s going to be OK. You’re going to get through it. And I’m going to help you.”

  Instead what I got was:

  “Well, you’re just going to have to get used to it. It’s your life now. The sooner you suck it up and face that, the better off you’ll be.”

  She did look me in the eyes, at least.

  Even as I looked around for something to throw at her as she left, it occurred to me: Wow, I’m really getting on her nerves. And as much as I hated to have to say it: That raging hell bitch was right. Basically, there was no way around it: I have a disease, a disease that used to kill people just a few decades ago but that now folks are able to live with relatively healthily if they take care of themselves. I basically needed to buck up, learn what I needed to learn, and stop whining.

  During the week I was at Rex I simultaneously loathed Kimberly and appreciated her honesty. Sure, she had an irritating tendency to roll her eyes and sigh whenever she entered my room, but she would kind of justify her existence at least once a day, like when she commented upon my stress eating by saying, “You know, just because your mom brought you three packets of Nabs this morning doesn’t mean you have to eat every one.” My response to this type of thing was usually just a silent dimming of my eyelids, because the lady spoke the truth.

  “Hi, honey.” Mom walked into the room just as Kimberly left one day. “Oh, hi, Kimberly! You’ve been so good to us, thank you so much.” Mom’s effusive courtesy toward Kimberly was really starting to become a problem. Kimberly nodded and replied, “Oh, you’re welcome” in a singsongy voice, as if she were Julie freaking Andrews all of a sudden. She then contorted her mouth into the shape of a human smile, turned, and walked out.

  “Here,” Mom said, turning back to me. “I got you some sugar-free chocolate. They had some at the Diabetes Center.”

  She placed the chocolate bar on the tray next to my bed. See, Tim? I thought. When God shuts a chocolate door he opens a sugar-free chocolate window. I picked it up and opened the wrapper.

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” Mom said. “But the lady at the store said you shouldn’t have more than two squares at a time, otherwise it’ll really mess up your stomach.”

  I settled for one square. It was gross.

  “Timmy, I’ve come to the conclusion that I was wrong about the whole diabetes thing,” Ruth the terrible prognosticator said as we sat on the deck in my backyard sucking glasses of Fresca over ice through straws. “In fact, I think you may actually have it. You know, diabetes.”

  I finished arranging my blood sugar testing kit on the table in front of us, jabbed my finger, got some blood, placed it on the test strip, and started the timer. “Yes, Ruth, you could be right,” I replied. “I mean, who’s to say, though, really? Doctors? Blood tests? Deadly, record-breaking blood-glucose levels? Pfff. I need proof.”

  “Yes, well, it’s pretty likely that it was more than just heatstroke. I mean, the doctors have put you on insulin, and you’re having to do all these blood tests all the time with the finger pricky things. Probably time to start considering the possibility that, you know, you may be diabetic after all.”

  Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeep. This series of beeps signaled that it was time to wipe the test strip of the unsightly blood droplet and stick it into the machine so it could give me a reading after another dang minute.

  “I’m really sorry for the error,” Ruth continued. “It was very hot that day, and I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I mean, look on the bright side. Would we b
e sitting here in this beautiful weather having so much fun talking about me if you didn’t feel horribly guilty?”

  “That’s a good point.”

  “There’s a bright side to everything. Praise the Lord. So how was Saranac?”

  Beeeeeep. The time was up, and the monitor had rendered its verdict: 134!

  “Wow, Ruth, I’ve got an amazingly normal blood sugar for such a freak of nature. What say you we celebrate with some Nabs?”

  The Nab—that exquisite marriage of peanut butter and inexplicably orange cracker—had become my favorite nibbly thing. It was the kind of snack that my doctor approved of because it contained carbs and protein, which would help keep my blood sugars stable during the first year when I’m figuring out the best dosages of insulin to give myself. Because the first year after a type 1 diabetes diagnosis was pretty much designated “the honeymoon period.” And I was smack in the middle of it.

  During the honeymoon period, a newly type 1 diabetic’s pancreas is likely—albeit sporadically—still producing and secreting small amounts of insulin. Eventually, the pancreas will be completely “insulin deficient” (such a sad phrase), and the person will then be completely “insulin dependent” (also sad). So I was struggling to figure out the balance between enough insulin and too much.

  I was on a regimen of two insulin shots a day. Those two shots, taken before breakfast and before dinner, each contained two types of insulin: regular, which would start to work in about an hour and would stay in my system for a few hours after that; and lente, which was a long-lasting insulin that didn’t start for about five hours and would carry me through the day or the night. All of this insulin was harvested from other humans somehow. Gross, yes, but better than the previous alternative, pig insulin, which was just insulting.

  Apparently the trick of dealing with this new, dreadful disease was maintaining a balance between diet, exercise, and insulin dosage. If this balance was not maintained there would be trouble. If, for example, I decided to just say “screw it” and eat Twinkies for breakfast every day and not compensate for all that sugar with a crazy exercise regimen or extra insulin, I would probably have to have a foot hacked off by the time I was thirty-five because of circulation problems resulting from chronic high blood sugar levels. On the other hand, if I was constantly careless and didn’t eat enough to cover the insulin I’d given myself and the amount of physical activity I was regularly engaging in, I would have a low-sugar attack, stagger around zombie-like, do embarrassing things in public, and then collapse in a puddle of sweat and idiocy. The former was a more long-term concern; the latter, a daily danger.

  I’d already had a few attacks in the middle of the night when my blood sugar went dangerously low and I started convulsing and seizing up. Professionals had to be called, and I still had a bruise on my swollen nose from slamming my face against the floor, which didn’t make me look tough so much as it made me look like I slammed my face against the floor.

  As a result of these early attacks, my number one biggest fear in the world changed from being caught by my mom jerking off in my room to an International Male catalog to finding myself alone somewhere (or in the middle of nowhere with a group of people) with a plummeting blood sugar level and no snacks to save the day. I would face this fear often in these early years because, you know, life is hard and there’s a lot of things to remember and keep track of and sometimes you just forget to put the dang Snickers bar in your backpack and STOP JUDGING ME.

  It was a frightful learning curve. I was worried about my ability to manage this disease, because science and math were my weakest subjects and who wants to spend all day reading dreary magazines like Diabetes Forecast? But there were moments when I felt I had control of the situation, however briefly. Like at that moment, as I sat with Ruth, on the deck in my backyard, basking in the summer sun, munching on Nabs: I was safe for the time being and in no danger of tweaking out. My blood sugar was normal, and I could drink in as much of Ruth’s delicious sympathy as I wanted.

  “It’s sad that you couldn’t go to Saranac,” Ruth said. “But you did get a free week at the hospital. You shouldn’t forget that.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “And lots of pretty flowers.”

  Brad came to visit a few times that summer. His visits meant a lot to me because obviously it was his sympathy that I wanted more than anyone’s.

  “How you feeling, buddy?” he asked the first time he came over after I was out of the hospital. “You look good!”

  It felt amazing to hear that from his strong lips, even though I knew I looked like hell because I’d been holed up in a hospital bed for more than a week living on crackers, saccharine, and angst. When a handsome man tells you after you get out of the hospital that you look good, you don’t argue.

  “Ready to play?” he smiled.

  Boy, was I. We had a tennis date, and I was ready to play. To bounce some balls. To volley. To go deep. To receive his backhand. To return his serve. And if there was a God, Brad would get too hot to keep his shirt on and would have to just tear it off with his bare hands and fling the hot ’n’ soggy thing at my face, while biting his lip.

  There was no God. Though it was a typically brutally hot North Carolina day in July, Brad showed no signs of even beginning to break a sweat. And I was, of course, the exact opposite, my shirt drenched and clinging to my gangly frame after a mere ten minutes.

  After playing a full set I began to realize that I wasn’t just wet from the heat. I seemed to be playing worse than normal during that last game. In fact, I couldn’t remember successfully hitting the ball once. The last score I remembered hearing (did I say it?) was “forty–love.” I bent forward and put my hands on the top of my knees to catch my breath.

  “You OK, Tim?” Brad said with concern on his face, wiping the almost invisible dots of perspiration on his forehead.

  “Yeeeeeeaaah,” I said very slowly. “Neeeeeed tooooo siiiiiiiit dooooooooooowwwwn.” I stumbled over to the grass and slumped down onto it, reaching into my pocket for the glucose tablets I’d brought for just such an emergency. Glucose tablets were horse-pill-sized edible sugar tablets that tasted like chalk but didn’t melt, so they wouldn’t turn to slop in my pocket. I pushed one of the tablets out of its container and started chomping as Brad came over and sat down on the grass beside me.

  “Is it your sugar level?”

  I nodded, finishing the first tablet and starting loudly on a new one. An insulin reaction brings out the ravenous beast in a person—it’s not unlike the effect that marijuana has—a compulsion to eat powerful enough to make you combine foods that wouldn’t normally go well together. I’d already experienced one in the middle of the night during which I dunked Oreos into a glass of orange juice and enjoyed the hell out of it.

  “So does this happen often?”

  “Na na tha mu js win I do too muts…stuff,” I explained.

  Brad nodded. “I was wondering if you were getting tired. You didn’t seem able to, you know, hit the ball much that last game.”

  “Js, y’know, shə ga thn.”

  “Yeah. I guess we should have taken a break a while ago, huh. You know, Tim, God really had his hand on you that day in Baltimore.”

  I wanted to say, “I know, I could have died” but couldn’t form the words.

  “I’m so glad that we got to the hospital in time. My girlfriend is a nurse, and she said she can’t believe your blood sugar was that high. She’s heard of people dying when their blood sugar is, like, six hundred.”

  Stupid girlfriend.

  “But you made it. That’s just a miracle.”

  I liked where he was going with this.

  Brad kept talking, about miracles and the grace of God, then about Saranac and the ropes course and the parasailing and the singing and the testimonies and the sunny weather and the swimming and all of the etcetera. I was doing my best to listen, but I was zoned out, still ravenous, and waiting for the sugar I’d ingested to start doing its work. In the inter
im I was a pretty useless conversation partner. I tried to stay focused by staring at Brad’s hairy, muscular thigh. I really wanted to pour some powdered sugar on it and lick it.

  “…and I think the Sanderson gang had a good time. We all missed you, though.”

  Brad and I sat for a little while on the grass. I slowly came back to myself and realized where I was and what had happened. As would always happen when I came to after an insulin spell, I felt a great, overwhelming embarrassment. I hoped I hadn’t said anything inappropriate out loud, like that I wanted to eat his hairy, muscular thighs.

  “God, I’m sorry, Brad, that was so weird.”

  “That’s all right, man. No problem. I think your body’s still getting used to being diabetic.”

  “Yeah.”

  We stood up and walked back to his car. I was so tired from the adrenaline that had surged through my body during the reaction that I felt like I was navigating through a strong ocean current.

  “Do you mind if I lie down in the back, Brad? I still feel kinda weird.”

  “Sure, that’s fine. You do what you need to do.”

  I opened the passenger door of his compact car, flipped the seat forward, and wriggled into the backseat. Brad sat in the driver’s seat and turned on the engine. The vinyl of the backseat was hot from the sun, and it felt nice on my face. I could see the back of Brad’s head, the tufts of his dark hair.

  As I lay there, I tried to remember anything from the conversation we had while we were sitting on the grass. I could just recall snatches of stories about Saranac. Then I fell asleep for the rest of the drive home. Pretty sure I dreamt about tennis balls and tufts of soft hair.

  Mom decided I should go to a diabetes summer day camp for a week. This did not appeal to me. What on earth was there to do all week at a camp for diabetic teenagers? Sure, there would probably be diabetes instructional videos and activities, some diabetes nutrition workshops, and a few panel discussions on the best diabetes paraphernalia to have in the house. But what were we going to do the rest of the time? Would there be some diabetes-related arts and crafts?