In this week’s episode both our storytellers are sharing their experience with diabetes. More than 34.2 million Americans have diabetes, however, many people don’t know about the disease or that they even have it. This episode is to raise awareness for American Diabetes Association Alert Day, which is on March 22 this year.
Part 1: Diabetes runs in Michele Carlo’s family and she’s determined not wind up like them.
Michele Carlo is a native New Yorker, a Nuyorican, a natural redhead, and remembers when a slice of pizza (and the NYC subway) cost 50 cents. As a storyteller, she has performed across the U.S., including Joe’s Pub, RISK! live shows and podcast, and the MOTH’s Mainstage in NYC; and has appeared on NPR (“Latino USA”) and PBS (“Latino Americans of NY & NJ,” “Stories from the Stage”). She is also the author of the NYC-set memoir “Fish Out of Agua: My life on neither side of the (subway) tracks” and a sometime actor. For more on Michele: www.michelecarlo.com
Part 2: Comedian Gastor Almonte comes to terms with his new diabetes diagnosis.
Gastor Almonte is a stand-up comedian and storyteller from Brooklyn, NY. He's appeared on Comedy Central's This Is Not Happening, Risk! podcast and the Story Collider Podcast. Timeout magazine named him one of your "New Comedy Obsessions." He's been featured on the New York Comedy Festival, The People's Impov Theater's SoloCom and Cinderblock Comedy Festival. His new album, Immigrant Made, was released in March 2019.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
When I was in seventh grade my science teacher called me up in front of the class to make an example of me to support her lesson in genetics, presumably because I had, and still have, red hair.
“Michelle, you're Irish, right?”
“No, I'm Puerto Rican.”
“Oh. Well, what color is your mother's hair?”
“Black.”
“And your father?”
“Black.”
“And your grandparents’?”
“Gray.”
Now, of course she was right because two dark-haired people can’t have redheaded child. And it doesn't matter what ethnicity they are, but I was being a brat so I got sent to the principal's office.
Later on in my life, I realized that there was something that was also kind of genetically true about being Latinx is that a lot of us, especially I can say in my family, are predisposed to certain types of medical conditions. In my family, it's the hat trick of glaucoma, asthma and diabetes. In my family, anyone who's over 40 and overweight gets type 2 diabetes. And if it runs unchecked, if you don't take care of yourself, by the time you're in your 60s you have either died from or suffer from heart disease. So in my family, I learned very early on that diabetes equals death.
When I was in ninth grade, my father, who had smoked two packs of unfiltered Camels every day since he was about 12, went to the doctor and was told, “Quit smoking today or drop dead tomorrow.” And to his credit, my father stubbed out the cigarette he was smoking right then and never picked up another.
However, over the subsequent years he put on a considerable amount of weight. And by the time I had graduated high school, he had developed type 2 diabetes, of which he was kind of fatalistic about saying, “Well, you know, I was going to get it anyway.”
And I was like, “No, Daddy, you didn't have to get it.”
And he was like, “Well, you know, it doesn't matter.”
And it got worse because he refused to stick to any diet that he was given to by any doctor. I guess I could kind of understand it a little bit but like was he being stubborn? Prideful? Probably a little bit of both, because I don't know if you're familiar with Caribbean Latin cuisine but it is varied and so tasty from our shared heritage of European, African and indigenous culture. A meal is not a meal without meat, fried meat. And carbs, lots of carbs from rice and beans and starchy tubers like yucca, yautia, batata and of course plantains.
Michele Carlo tells her story to a limited audience at The Tank Theater in NYC in December, 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And then of course a meal is not a meal without a postre, a dessert, like tembleque, which is a coconut flan. A coconut pudding or flan which is a custard or gelato which is ice cream. And then of course you finish up with a cup of café con leche, coffee with steamed whole milk and two or three azucars, sugars.
It gets better. When the holidays come, you get pork, pork, pork and more pork. And then you get coquito, which is a delicious blend of rum, coconut cream, eggs and more rum. I mean, who in their right mind would give up all this deliciousness, even if your body couldn't take it anymore?
By the time I was about to graduate from art school, my father had become insulin dependent. And, “Just in case,” he showed me how to inject him with a needle, pre-loaded insulin needle if it was necessary. He taught me by sticking it into an orange. I hoped I never, ever, ever, ever had to use it.
But, one day, my father collapsed on the kitchen floor after having his usual breakfast of two fried eggs, two fried sausages, two twin donuts and two cups of café con leche with three sugars each. My mom ran to the phone to call 9-1-1. My brother ran downstairs to try to flag down a cop car. And I bent down to smell my father's breath.
I know. Weird, right? But he had told me that if somebody has a diabetic incident, you have to smell their breath, because if it smells like acetone, like nail polish remover, then what they need is sugar. But if it smells sweet, then what they need is insulin. And my father's breath smelled sweet, sweet, sweet.
So I ran to the refrigerator, took that pre-loaded needle, kind of like got his jammies down a little bit and I was like, “Oh, God, who wants to look at their father's butt?” So I just like turned my head and just jabbed into his hip and hoped for the best.
And he started to come to. And when the paramedics came, to their credit in the Bronx they came pretty quickly, they told my father that he was very lucky that I was there.
And when they left, I was like, “Daddy, you can't continue like this. You have to stick to the diet that the doctors give you. You have to start eating like broccoli and brown rice and cantaloupe or you're going to die.”
And he said, “Little girl, if I eat that, I will die. Who's going to take care of me when you leave?” Because I was about to graduate and fixing to move out on my own.
And I was like, “Daddy, you have to take care of yourself. You have to take care of yourself.” But he didn't. About ten years later he did die of a massive heart attack coronary brought on by his unchecked type 2 diabetes. He was just three days short of his 65th birthday.
After that my mom, who basically I would say ate kind of healthy, by which I meant that she'd sometimes eat a salad, she started comforting her grief with the regular meals of McDonald’s and Entenmann's and Sara Lee and she started putting on weight also. One day, I went to Manhattan into the city to meet up with her and my brother, probably going to go see a movie or something. I remember meeting them at the train station and my mother slowly climbing up the stairs.
And when we started walking, she stops. And she's huffing, she's puffing, she's totally out of breath. And she goes, “Mira, [pants] I have to stop. I have to stop.” I turn around because I'm like walking three steps ahead of her and I see that she's totally red-faced and puffy. She had put on a lot of weight.
And I was just like, “Mom, mom, are you okay?”
“I'm okay. I am just old.”
I'm like, “No, you're not old. It's not normal to walk half a block and not be able to breathe.” I was like, “Have you gone to the doctor? Do you think you might have diabetes like Daddy?”
And she's like, “No. No diabetes. You are going to be old someday.”
Michele Carlo tells her story to a limited audience at The Tank Theater in NYC in December, 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I'm just like, “Mom, it has nothing to do with being old. Look at the crap that you and Brian are eating.” I'm just like, “You have to eat broccoli and brown rice and cantaloupe or you're going to die like Daddy.”
And she goes, “Michelle, I am a Latina. If I eat brown rice, I will die. You eat it.”
So basically, I was eating broccoli, brown rice, cantaloupe and every other fruit and vegetable too, because when my father died that was a giant wake-up call for me. Basically, I revamped my diet overnight. I stopped eating all fast food, all commercial baked goods and most soda. I make the exception for Myers's Rum and Coke, but I don't have that every day, okay. And I make sure that my weight does not go above 125 pounds, because, as you can see, I'm on tiptoes. I'm kind of short.
But at this point in my life, I didn't care, because the only time I ate traditional Puerto Rican cuisine meals is when I went to my mom's or another relative's house. And some of the relatives were like throwing me like some mad shade when I wasn't eating certain things and I was like, “Well, I don't care.”
But then again, I did care because it made me wonder if I was a traitor. Had I rejected my culture? Had I become this kind of like macrobiotic person? I was like, “You know what? It doesn't matter.” Because, at this point, I was pushing 40 and I did not want the curse of the Puerto Ricans to catch me.
About a year after that conversation with my mom, she too collapsed on the kitchen floor right after breakfast. My brother called me and said, “Mommy's in the hospital.” So I just ran out of work and I ran up to the Bronx. I found out that not only was my mom's blood sugar 500, three of her arteries were clogged and she had a massive heart attack. Only, unlike my father, she lived long enough to go in for coronary bypass surgery.
The next morning when my brother and I were allowed into the ICU to see her finally, it was so surreal. She was like on this ventilator thing and hooked up to all these machines and there were tubes and things beeping and making noises everywhere. And there were two nurses stationed in the room also. It was just like you couldn't believe it. The fright was just so horrible.
And maybe it was because of this fright and maybe it was because my brother and I were totally exhausted from sleeping on the hard vinyl waiting room hospital chairs all night, we started— I should say I started a fight.
“Look, you know, why don't you watch out what Mommy and you are eating anymore. She got this because she was eating like Daddy. And like Daddy had diabetes and had a heart attack, grandma and grandpa had it, all our titos and titas had it, and you better watch out because you're about 35 now, right? And you're getting a gut. You're going to be next on that slab if you don't watch it.”
And he went, “Oh, yeah? Well, you just think you're slick because you're so skinny. I bet you still smoke pot.”
“Dude, if I smoked weed I'd be a gordita because I'd have munchies all the time. You need to chill out. Maybe you're the one that needs to smoke some pot.”
This is the time when my mother started coming to, when she started waking up. She started stirring and then she started thrashing around a little bit and that was so scary because one of the tubes that was in her side came out. And what I perceived as a fountain of blood started coming out of her.
My brother screams and, before the nurses could come in, I just jumped and I jammed my finger into the hole in my mother's side, just like that fairy tale about the boy with the dike. The whatever, the little Dutch boy, right? I'm trying to plug the hole.
The nurses reach me and they're like saying, “No, you can't do that. Your hands are not sterile.” And then they basically throw me and my brother out of the room.
My brother looks at me and he goes, “You killed Mommy.”
And as I go into the bathroom to wash my hands I started thinking, yeah, maybe I did kill Mommy, because I wasn't there all the time to keep after them to try to eat healthy. I could tell you that there's no pain like washing your own mother's blood off your hands. I totally felt like the Puerto Rican Lady Macbeth.
But my mom lived. She lived and she's, oh, my God, she's going to be 89 on her next birthday, which is next April. You know why she lived? Because she listened to the doctors and she changed her diet. She'll eat broccoli if it's got cheese on it. She likes cantaloupe. But there's one thing that she won't eat ever, brown rice. Because she says, “Michelle, I am a Boricua. Eating brown rice will kill me.”
Thank you.
Part 2
I love baseball. Baseball is an awesome sport mainly because it gives regular people hope that they could be stars too. Like baseball, you could look like me and be the best player. That's crazy, right? That’s bananas. That's why when you go to gift shops at baseball stadiums, they don't sell the pants. You can only buy the jerseys, because if you showed up in the full outfit they might think, “Oh, you belong out there.”
I played it my whole life growing up. My dad was a real big fan. He's Dominican. It's part of the culture. I was raised to be a pro player. By the time I was in eighth grade, I could throw 75 miles per hour. So I had to get a little bit of gun but I was still chubby. So I could throw really hard but I also had to take a deep breath if I had to tie my shoelaces. It was a baseball body. I was built like that.
And it's just something I've always had. I was chubby but I still took part in sports. When I was in high school, I started on a football team. My intramural basketball team dominated St. Francis prep hall. It was just crazy. You should read about it.
And I wanted the same for my kids, but they're not like that at all, not even close. My son, he's 11 years old. He grows mushrooms for fun. That's what he does in the house. There's a shelf in his bedroom with mushrooms and he's excited. I can't explain to you how weird that is to me. Like I have to go to my house and have conversations about plants and mushrooms and fungi. I don't know what he's talking about but he seems into it.
And he made me sign him up for coding classes. He's like, “I want to do coding.” So he has a coding group he does after school.
My daughter writes poetry. I don't know if you hear how I talk, but I kind of get to the point. She writes fluffy words and then makes me read them and then try to figure out what they're saying. And I explained to her, “Hey, you know that you could use these same words to just say the stuff.”
We got different philosophies is what I'm saying.
Gastor Almonte shares his story with a limited audience at Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, MA in November, 2021. Photo by Kimberly Vadelnieks and Ben Kalama.
But I found my niche too as I got older. I realized, looking back on it, my favorite parts about baseball weren't really playing. I didn't really care about how hard I could throw. That was something my dad cared about. My favorite part about baseball was sitting in the dugout, talking shit with the other people on the team. That shit was dope. It was crazy. You could just eat seeds, spit on the floor and crack jokes. And that's a job for people. That's bananas.
As I got older, I realized that you could do that. I'm a comedian now. I perform on stages. It's really dope that I could just get up here and tell you how I feel and someone would pay me for it. America is beautiful.
And that's what I do. That's what I do for a living. This past year I lost that for a bit, right? We had this quarantine that took place for almost two years. For two years, I couldn't go out and perform.
During the quarantine, I found out I was diabetic. I wasn't moving much. I don't really exercise. I don't know if you get that vibe from me. The secret is out. The little exercise I got is because I used to walk a lot because when you go to perform in New York, you're walking around from club to club. I was getting 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day walking between clubs, but that was because there was a goal to perform on a stage. When the quarantine hit, my steps went from like 8,000 a day to like 200 a day. I was just not moving.
One day, I started blanking out. My vision doubled. I passed out and I got taken to the hospital. I spent six days there. They found out I was diabetic.
None of that really registered to me, because I wasn't all here. I was hallucinating when it happened. It was hard for me to identify as that, but I knew that it mattered to my family that I get better, so I did the things that they told me.
Gastor Almonte shares his story with a limited audience at Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, MA in November, 2021. Photo by Kimberly Vadelnieks and Ben Kalama.
I started eating oatmeal to get better. I've talked about my lack of respect for that meal before. I know some of you here don't know me, but it is the sand soup of the world. It is terrible. Do not eat it. You have better choices. You deserve better. Sincerely. Anyone that tells you different is lying to you. Cut them out your life. They are bad for you, okay?
But I ate it because they told me it would help me to eat better. And I made other changes like that and I stuck with it. Only with the hope that at some point, things would open up again. I'd be able to travel and perform again.
And it started to happen. I got a call a couple months back. TV production started to open up and a production company was a fan of mine and they said, “Hey, listen, with things opening up again, we want to film a pilot where we film the day in the life of comedians and that's like. So we're going to film you traveling through New England for two weeks doing shows. So you kind of get to go to different cities where you're not normally performing at. Kind of do like a fish‑out‑of‑water thing.”
They'd be like, “Oh, you know, like kid from Brooklyn performs in Amherst Massachusetts. Look at all the trees. What's he going to do?” Stuff like that.
You guys got an insane amount of trees up here, by the way. It just doesn't make sense just in general. There's cold, there's trees and there's people and there's never the three of those in the same place except here. That Venn diagram doesn't make sense.
But I was excited for it. So they sent me the paperwork and there's like stuff you got to fill out when you're doing a TV production. Dietary concerns. So I'm talking on the phone with the producer Chris and he's like, “Hey, you got any needs?”
I was like, “Oh, I'm diabetic, so as long as I got food pretty regularly, I'm good. I'm going to bring my own insulin. You don't got to worry about that.”
And he says, “Cool.”
So he sends me the form. I fill it out. I email it back and he gives me a call. And he's like, “Yo, hey, don't take this the wrong way. I just want to ask you something for clarity's sake.”
I was, “Okay. What's up?”
And I'm excited because, as a comedian, whenever someone says, “Hey, don't take this the wrong way,” I know, oh, I'm going to talk about this private moment in front of everybody.
So he's like, “Hey, man. I don't mean to be offensive. I don't know. I've never had this happen before. It's a new thing but…”
I'm like, “Okay. What are we getting at, homie?”
And he's like, “Well, you told me you were diabetic.”
I was like, “Yeah.”
And he's like, “And you filled out the form for what kind of foods you're looking to eat. So we got that. We're good.”
I was, “Okay. Great.”
And he said, “But I noticed that you didn't check that you were disabled.”
And I was like, “I'm not. I'm fully here. You’ve seen me before. My feet and my arms work.” I don't know if you heard, back in the day you should throw 75 miles per hour.
He's like, “That's cool.” He's like, “I'm not trying to change how you view yourself or identify. I'm just putting it out there because we just had a meeting with HR and we're trying to be more aware and proactive and sensitive to people with invisible disabilities.”
And I'm like, “Like Superman? Like nothing can shoot them?”
He's like, “No, that's invincible. This is invisible.”
I was like, “Okay.”
So he's like, “Yeah, like some people got sickle cell. So diabetes does fall under that. And not to say that you have to say you're disabled. It's how you identify. But I'm putting it out there. It's a thing that you can say. And if you do so, there's stuff we could do that’s in addition to what we have,” etcetera, etcetera.
And I'm like, “Yo, but you see me. I look regular. I'm a regular dude.”
And he's like, “Again, you know, just putting it out there. You have the option.”
He hangs up and he gives me the time to kind of think it over. And I'm thinking. I'm like, “I know I'm not disabled. I don't have a disability.”
So I go outside and I call up my brother. He's 20 years old. He lives down the block and I make him play catch with me just like, “Ah, I'm still throwing rockets out here. I'm fine.”
We play basketball. He's six-foot-five. He wins, but I scored some buckets. Like I feel good.
My wife comes home from work and me and her start talking while the kids are doing homework. I'm like, “Yo, you believe this dude said that?”
She's like, “Well, it's something to consider. They're not trying to be rude to you. They're trying to be sensitive just in case that's something that's on your mind.
Because when COVID happened, for example, you were able to cut the line because you were diabetic. So clearly, that's an idea that's out there.
And you being diabetic, all that means is that you have one other thing to consider before you go out. And every time you eat, you have to take those shots to make sure you're okay, and that matters.
So it's not that you're unable to do things, it's just you have to think about that and I think that's something that other people have to consider too.”
And I'm like, “But I look regular. I don't look like I have a disability. I'm not disabled.”
And my son, he said, “Hey, Dad, just for clarity's sake. We're not supposed to say ‘disabled’ anymore.”
I was, “Excuse me?”
He's like, “It's not ‘disabled’. It's ‘people with disabilities’.”
I was like, “How do you know that?”
“Coding camp, Dad. We got two kids. One of them is a kid with the wheelchair. He's awesome. He's taught me a lot in coding. And there's another kid in the camp as well.”
And I don't even know what the thing is that he deals with. He just let us know.
And I'm like, “Yo, can I sign up for this coding camp too? It sounds like y'all are covering a lot more information than what I thought I was paying for. That's pretty cool.”
I look back on my wife and I'm like, “Okay. So I don't think I have a disability because, again, I feel like I look like a regular person.”
And my daughter is like, “Dad, it's not that disabled people can look regular. It's that sometimes regular people have a disability.”
And I was like, “Fuck, those words are dope. I see what that poetry shit is doing. That's kind of hot, yo.”
And it weighed on me and I told Chris. I was like, “Yo, for the time being, I'm going to leave it as is for this project, but I'll think it over for the next ones as we keep working. But I got a lot of peace of mind knowing that however I identify as now or how that changes, it's okay. I'm going to be able to keep moving and keep being productive and, at the very least, my kids are going to love me and be open-minded to it too, even if they can't throw 75 miles per hour.”
Thank you.