A piece I wrote for the “Discover” section of the Metrolinx website about the upcoming elevated guideway across the Humber River, part of the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension.
Author: markus64
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Life with Keto
If you want something badly enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Fear something enough, and you’ll do whatever it takes to escape it.
I was parking the car when my doctor phoned with test results that showed elevated blood sugar. I had him on my headset, but almost ran into the wall when I heard.
Diabetes runs in the family. Mom had it, and I remember her bold prediction: “Your sugars were out of whack when you were born. You’re going to get it.” She was a great mother, loving and doting on me. She also had the ability to transform into a dark prophetess of doom at all the wrong times. That was one of them.
After the call, I dove into research and found two things that could reliably improve the situation: diet and exercise. I could wrap my head around exercise, even if I didn’t love it, but diet was another thing completely.
I loved my carbohydrates.
I loved sugar so much, I made honey sandwiches regularly as a kid. I’d lick my finger and stick it into the sugar jar to satisfy my cravings. Dessert was an essential food group, and one of my main joys in life was to visit a fine French patisserie and linger over the oeuvres before selecting the most decadent one to savour.
A farewell to carbs
All that went out the window with keto.
The ketogenic diet dramatically cuts carbohydrates, increases fat intake and moderates protein. It fuels your body without the carbs that raise blood sugar. True keto is hard to follow: it cuts out practically every carb from potatoes to rice, bread to pasta, and ups animal fats. So I follow a modestly low-carb version. But following even that version can be socially awkward.
My wife is Italian. Bread and pasta are at her core. She had a minor meltdown on learning about my new reality, and to this day I’m not sure the in-laws fully understand. But I committed to do whatever it took to get my blood sugar back in the green. I became friends with leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds. Cheese blunted the urge for sweets. I reluctantly embraced exercise with the mantra, “I don’t have to love it. I just have to do it.”
My blood sugar came back down to the point where my doctor said, “You know, you can ease up — it’s lower than mine.” But fear doesn’t evaporate when your doctor gives you a pat on the back. I remember mom pricking her finger six times a day to test her sugars, and injecting insulin morning, noon and night. Even then, it was a struggle to keep her blood sugar level.
Diabetes has been one of the leading causes of death in Canada since before I was born. It was effectively a death sentence for those with Type 1 — and for many with Type 2 — until the discovery of insulin a century ago. But insulin is a daily, imperfect treatment, not a cure. So my fear endures.
A voyage of keto discovery
I’ve discovered food substitutes, including a low-carb pasta that’s decent enough for my wife to mooch from when I make it. There are keto bread options that taste passably close to the real thing. There’s low-carb beer, almond crust pizzas and more.
But nothing comes close to the real thing, and I always feel like the odd man out when everyone else at the restaurant is twirling their pasta while I’m waltzing with my old friend, the salad.
My world changed the day I discovered an ice cream with a sugar substitute. It felt like the clouds parted, and God shone a light beam onto my head, whispering “You’ve suffered enough, son.”
I grabbed the chocolate chip mint flavour, dug in, and in one sweet, glorious instant, I was a kid again in Swensen’s ice cream parlour in Halifax. Whenever I got good grades, mom would treat me, and I would invariably order five scoops of chocolate chip mint and do my best to demolish them.
About a year after my beautiful ice cream revelation, research linked the magic ingredient to an increase in heart attack and stroke. My newfound relationship with ice cream ended in bitter divorce.
Hope springs eternal
I know that no matter what I do, my blood sugar isn’t going to improve dramatically anymore. There’s a good chance it’ll head in the opposite direction eventually. But I’m an optimist. There’s a lot of money driving research, and I live in hope that one day we’ll find a cure, not a treatment.
I can see that day clearly in my mind’s eye. I know the ice cream parlour I’ll visit. I can see the scoops of chocolate chip mint lined up. I can taste the first bite, and once more — for one glorious moment — I’ll become a little boy again, with a warm joy spreading through me.
Until then, I’ll keep on keto.
View this post at the Globe and Mail.
Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie.
He said it as if he were a little boy, not an 86-year-old man.
“Are we having chocolate cake?”
My first instinct was to blurt out, “I bought you lunch, set it out nicely, and that’s not enough?!”
I bit my tongue. I’m young enough to lose my cool but old enough to know better. It was the kind of question a little boy or an old man like my father might ask if they don’t understand the subtleties of a situation. The little boy will learn, but the old man has forgotten. The world is opening up for one of them, and they’re picking up on things like social niceties and expressing gratitude. The world is becoming smaller for the other as it coalesces around them, and they’re less able to think and see beyond their immediate circumstances.
I was angry, and it showed, but it had nothing to do with Dad. I had just received a text from my wife about an unexpected $6,000 tax bill. I was frantically trying to think of what had gone wrong, how I managed to miss it, and how I was going to explain all that to my wife. It pushed every other thought out of my head as I walked to pick up lunch. The last thing on my mind was dessert.
Getting takeout was one of the few things I could do for him since I lived so far away. One of my sisters who still lives in town was our family’s boots on the ground, shouldering the weekly slog of dad’s doctor appointments, medical consultations, finances and other responsibilities. Picking up chicken and chips a few times was the least I could do when I was around.
Visits often centred on me fixing his computer problems until dementia stole his ability to operate one. Then our time together focused on watching Blue Jays reruns, until he lost the ability to operate a remote control. At that point, he would get hopelessly mired in on-screen menus until he started falling asleep and I would steal the remote before it slipped to the floor.
In May I got “the call,” the one everyone dreads but can’t avoid. The first call was that he had fallen, broken his hip and was in hospital. The second was about a cancer that had been detected, and that he was considered too frail for surgery. I flew to Halifax two days later.
Funny things go through your head when loved ones are dying. There’s regret, anger, bargaining and all kinds of crazy emotions.
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All I could think of was chocolate cake.
I made a little ask to the universe on the flight, to allow me to arrive in time to share a bite of chocolate cake with him. I believed I could atone for being angry if I could just get there in time to do that. That’s how the human mind operates at times like these: irrationally. The cake was irrelevant, but the importance I attached to the gesture – the chance to repair a moment before it was too late – meant everything.
That plan went out the window when I arrived at the hospital. Between the medications and his frailty, he couldn’t manage more than a few bites of pudding or mashed potatoes a day. Still, I clung doggedly to the idea. I needed to believe I could redeem that moment of anger and what it represented to me if I could just share a piece of cake with him.
We all make deals with God or the universe or whatever we believe in when we’re in tough situations. We blow little things out of proportion in the moment. I know full well that a stupid little piece of cake means nothing in the bigger picture, and the time spent visiting him twice a year outweighed being flustered on my penultimate visit. But little things loom large because we’re irrational animals. It’s just part of our makeup.
Dad died a few days after my return to Toronto. He wanted his ashes scattered near the Mira River in Cape Breton, where the family had a cottage he built with his dad. It’s God’s country, and I understand why he loved it.
I flew back for his service, and at some point in the coming months I’ll return to make the drive up to Cape Breton with some of my sisters, and scatter his remains. I’ll do two other things: pour out a tot of the Jamaican rum he so enjoyed, and leave a piece of chocolate cake, minus a bite from me. I don’t believe things we leave for loved ones appear in any afterlife, but I know that life is made of gestures, actions and intent. I know the crows, not Dad, will feast on it. But I choose to believe that simple gestures we make in this world somehow resonate in the next.
Like sharing a piece of chocolate cake.