Body Language

In my youth, I called myself a writer, but my first passion was distance running. I aspired to shocking feats of physical endurance, nurtured fantasies of heroism. (Probably I read too many comic books.) But at twenty-three, my dreams were burst by a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. Suddenly I needed insulin injections each time I ate. If I didn’t get the dosage right, my blood sugar spiked or plummeted. High, I grew tired and achy, irritable, needed to inject again. Low, I began to shake and sweat, couldn’t think straight, had to eat sugar right away or risk a coma. No more hopes of heroism; now I was a potential victim in need of saving. Diabetes wasn’t my fault — just bad luck — but I still felt that I must have done something to deserve it.

Worried for my health, my grandmother told me anecdotes about my grandfather, who’d died of complications from type 1 diabetes before I was...