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Denise Gets a Deadline
Denise wasn't sick enough to need insulin injections yet, so the nurse-practitioner offered a less alarming option. "I'll give you one month to get your blood sugar down with weight loss and exercise," she said. After prescribing a strict 1,800-calorie-a-day diet and no sweets, she studied Denise for a moment. The health care provider saw an overweight woman in a baggy sweat suit perched awkwardly on the paper-covered exam table, looking frightened and defeated. "Honestly, I don't think you'll be able to do it," the nurse added. "If anything, you'll probably gain weight and have to go on oral medication."Denise burst into tears. "So many emotions raced through my head -- shock, fear, denial, grief -- that I could hardly hear what the nurse was telling me. It was still sinking in that I had diabetes, just like my mother." Her mom had been on oral medication, but her blood sugar was always going up and down, and there were times when she had to go on insulin. And even that didn't really work, since she ended up with such awful complications. "I realized that I could lose my eyesight or my legs, and felt like my life was over," Denise says.
The nurse's grim assessment rang painfully true. "Even as a child, I was chunky," says Denise. "I'd tried lots of diets, but they never worked. I'd lose a few pounds, then gain them back -- plus a little extra." The problem was the unhealthy eating habits she'd learned from her parents, who were both seriously overweight. Her childhood meals had typically consisted of meat and fried potatoes, or pizza piled with extra cheese, followed by a rich dessert, patterns that persisted when Denise was an adult. "I don't know how many calories I was eating a day, but it was a lot. I'd have three big meals, drink four or five cans of Pepsi, and then snack on doughnut holes and Snickers bars," she says. Over the years, her weight soared to 255 pounds on her five-foot-nine frame.
As she left the medical building on that February day in 2004, she was angry. "I sat in my car and thought, Wait a minute, give me a chance! I'll show you, lady! I'd seen what can happen when diabetics don't take care of themselves. My mother used to tell us that she was following her diet, then I'd see her sneaking candy in the other room. Even as a kid, I knew that couldn't be good for her." She looked at Allyson, who was happily playing with toys in her car seat, then thought about the new baby on the way. "I want to be around to see my grandkids grow up," she told herself.
After stopping at a drugstore to buy a blood sugar meter, Denise drove home to break the news to her husband, Gabe, a physically fit man at a healthy weight. Initially, he wasn't worried. "My first wife died of breast cancer, so I figured this wasn't nearly as bad," says the 52-year-old owner of an oil-well service company. "But as I read up on the disease, I learned how serious it really is. I looked at Denise and realized that I could lose her. We'd both been widowed young, and we said, 'No, that's not going to happen again.'" He held Denise in his arms and promised to do everything he could to help. "We'll fight this together."
That afternoon, after getting the good news that Allyson now had a new baby sister, Denise put the toddler in a stroller and set off for a walk. She didn't get far. "I was so out of shape that just going up the flight of stairs in my home left me huffing and puffing," she says. Predictably, after a few blocks, she was exhausted, breathless -- and extremely hungry. Although she was tempted to quit and return to the comforting embrace of her recliner, the grim statistics she'd read online stayed in her head.
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