Hanuman Garden: Interview: Jake




		Dr. Clown: What was it like for you to hear that you had diabetes, I mean, were you just not feeling well? JAKE: I went to the doctor and I had noticed--I had started working out and I noticed that I was really thirsty and I thought I really must be working out good. I was thinking maybe I am getting that deep down body thirst that I have heard about from Gatorade. I will try drinking some nutrition drinks or something. I would go to the water fountain and drink and drink and drink for like three minutes. Get up walk ten feet and still be thirsty. Then of course, have to run to the bathroom. Then I was losing weight. It just so happened where my day job was at the time was not far from my doctor’s office so I just walked over there one day and I talked to Greg and said, I am really thirsty, going to the bathroom a lot and losing weight. Could that be anything? It is about the easiest question that any doctor can answer as anyone who knows anything about diabetes can tell you. He said, yes, it sounds like you are diabetic. Right away he said to me, well there could be a lot of other things and diabetes would be the best thing of those to have. You could have some sort of weird hormonal problems in your brain. I think it is really true that diabetes is--well, it is a drag to have it but if you are going to have sort of a big major disease, diabetes is a good one to have because you can totally control it. Dr. Clown: When you were first diagnosed, what were your feelings about it? Was it like, oh I am glad it is this and not that? JAKE: No. I was really bummed. I was really mad. I was really upset. For a few days actually. Then, as soon as I started taking insulin and seeing, oh, now my blood sugar is normal again, okay. I had become diabetic right at about the time when this major study had come out that said regulating good A1C results which are correlated to good control, also correlate to fewer complications. Once I saw that I could control it, I was fine. Then I sort of resolved to be healthier than I had been before. I used to go to bed at all weird hours. Eat really huge breakfasts, then nothing for lunch, then wait too long for dinner and eat a really huge dinner. Just really pushing my body to the limit. Dr. Clown: Performer hours. JAKE: Yes. Ever since becoming diabetic, I definitely got onto a routine. I also started going to the gym all the time once I was diabetic. Fortunately, I never really drank and I don’t smoke. I don’t use drugs so none of that. There was not a lot of sort of lifestyle adjustments to make except for I do have a terrible sweet tooth. That is still a drag. Dr. Clown: When you were diagnosed, did they assigned you a nurse educator to fill you in? JAKE: Yes, she was great. I actually kind of knew some from having known Scott. I knew all about islets. Probably an auto immune disease where the body attacks the pancreas or the islets, whatever it is. I was actually able to get right in there and push the nurse educators to the limits. I would start asking advanced questions about what happens in this scenario, what happens in that scenario. When are you burning fat. If you have to drink carbohydrates before you work out because you are on insulin, are you ever going to get to the point of burning fat. How does that work, blah, blah. I love any problem that you can actually do something about is a great kind of problem to have. If you were to get a disease where they say, the best thing you can do is just relax, don’t stress, lie back. Give me ten books to read on not stressing. That is how I will deal with that. So diabetes, I am a good pick for it because I like something I can do something about. Now I’ve gotten sort of a more intuitive ping for how many calories I am going to be eating. I would be incredibly precise, I would be measuring out my grape nuts in a measuring cup every morning and pouring the same amount of soy milk over them and be really religious about it. Dr. Clown: That was from the get go once you were diagnosed? JAKE: Absolutely. Dr. Clown: You were like really towing the line all the way across? JAKE: Absolutely, yes. Dr. Clown: Did you feel that the nurse educators gave you good information? JAKE: Yes, they absolutely did. If they didn’t know anything, they would say I don’t know and they would find out. Over time, the Internet I was probably going at that point but the past four or five years it has really sort of exploded. Now you can get online and find out all kinds of answers. Dr. Clown: So it wasn’t the information sites that it was before? Do you do a lot of going to the Internet for answers or things about questions? JAKE: Yes, occasionally. A couple of times I have gotten test results back that have turned out to be bad, wrong test results, but in the meanwhile, I was worried what if something is wrong with my kidneys. I go and like look and try and find out as much information as I can. Dr. Clown: What is it like doing management on the road? JAKE: It is really hard to eat well on the road. Generally, you are eating at restaurants and restaurants are very high fat sweet food. That is the two ingredients to making something delicious is to make it fat and make it sweet. Dr. Clown: The two things that are the worst for you. JAKE: At first I would take cereal with me on the road and that was just a losing proposition. I would say, I am going to carry grocery bags full of food supplies in the van. It didn’t make me very popular as far as hogging up a bunch of space and it just didn’t work. So, I have learned now you have to eat smaller portions because the food is so bad for you. I have been around the cities that we go to and I have found where the good healthier restaurants are or a place where you can just get a box of cereal and milk and have breakfast that way. The other trick is when you are performing, I have to elevate my blood sugar before a show because the drumming is pretty physical. I get my blood sugar up around 200 before a show. If I do that, I usually coast down right where I want to be within like an hour and a half after the show. There has been times when I take my blood sugar before a show and I am about to faint. There are other times when I take my blood sugar before a show and I have to take insulin because it is so ridiculously high because I over shoot the mark by drinking too much cranberry juice. I always have juice stuff on stage whenever I play. Dr. Clown: Have you ever had any instances where you have been performing and been like whoa, wait a minute? JAKE: Yes, early on. It is funny because early on I was both more cautious and yet more prone to not being ready for a hypoglycemic reaction. Now I have a pretty good feeling for where I am at blood sugar wise most of the time. But I also test myself seven to ten times a day especially if we are performing. I really test a lot. Dr. Clown: Do you have some type of software that manages all that or do you keep records? JAKE: I used to keep records but now it is just--I don’t keep records anymore because I am just very focused on it. I would keep records if I was really sort of rethinking my whole insulin strategy. Some people say, well I use this kind of insulin, I take a lot more of this than that. I went to see an endocrinologist who said, why don’t you try switching over to this method and I actually went to the extent of charting my blood sugar so I could have a visual representation of where the highs and lows were. I just found that if I have a plan that works and stick with it, my blood sugar is in good shape. All my A1Z tests come back pretty good. Dr. Clown: What would be the one thing you would say to someone who is newly diagnosed? JAKE: I think it is a pretty manageable disease. You can be healthier than a lot of your friends if you take care of yourself. A lot of people blow off their health so completely that those people without diabetes can end up being in worse shape than the people with diabetes. I mean, diabetes is a risk factor for heart attacks so it is all the more reason not to smoke, all the more reason to exercise and get all the stuff you are supposed to do to be healthy. I think I am healthier now that before I had diabetes. I think it is reasonable to think that in 10 or 15 years from now, it will be curable. The main thing you want to do now is to control it. Hang in there. Dr. Clown: You are not like the other people I talk too. Most of them are like I can’t believe I have this disease. JAKE: I have to say I mean, I would be really pissed if I were a parent of a five year old kid who got diagnosed with diabetes. I would really feel like that is a pretty raw deal. It is interesting. I had a really interesting experience the first few months I was diabetic. I went to see a movie and it was the first movie I had seen since becoming diabetic that was set in the 19th century. I was watching the movie and I though, if I had been around in the 19th century, I would be toast by now. I would be dead. Thank God I am alive now. It is like those Miss America pageants where they ask if you could be alive at any time. I definitely wouldn’t go back before 1980. I would like to be born the day before insulin was discovered. Dr. Clown: I had the same thing with ACL replacement on both my knees. My family doctor was the cutting edge on scope surgery so it was not a problem. Imagine if this had happened and I was with some early century acting troupe in Italy and it would be like go get rid of Giovanni, he is no good no more. JAKE: They would tell me to keep drinking sugar until your body finally accepts it. Dr. Clown: Have you found that people who you work with and around you now know more about diabetes? Are they sensitive to the issue? Or are they, Dave is shooting up again? JAKE: They understand it. They are always asking questions. They are kind of just naturally curious people in general so yes. I trained them all on using the emergency glucagon kit that I have. Our guitar tech--most guitar techs have to be able to change guitars, keep an amp from tipping over, if it blows up, put it out, change strings, rewire an effects thing if it goes out. Our guitar tech knows all that and then often knows how to save me from diabetic shock. In fact, in his brief case with all his wrenches and wire cutters, he has a little emergency diabetes kit. I wear my medic alert. Usually when I am flying, I always have this thing hanging out so I can play the diabetes card with the stewardess. I have to eat now. Got a medical condition. If I had been a teenager when I got diabetes, I would have been really pissed off because all you do as a teenager--when I was a teenager, I came home, I scooped vanilla ice cream into a bowl, got out a frying pan, melted butter in it, poured brown sugar in it and sort of heated it up and poured it over the ice cream and hardened it into a sugary shell over the ice cream. It was just basically skiing down the slope towards diabetes at high, high speed. If someone had told me you can’t do that anymore, I don’t know what I would have done. I would have been furious. Plus all your friends. All you did when you were a teenager was just munch on stuff all day long. Your body is demanding it and also your psyche is demanding some sort of insulation from the torturous emotional life of teenagers. Dr. Clown: What age group does your band mainly play to? JAKE: It used to be sort of people in college and just out of college. Now we play to people who are as old as in their 40’s and as young as in their single digits. Teenagers. Much more like teenagers and from teenage years up to early 30’s. Also parents and little kids. Dr. Clown: Did you ever think about doing more diabetes awareness type stuff through what you do in the band? JAKE: Diabetic beat with Jay? No. Diet beat. No, not really. No, this is the only time I have ever talked to anybody about it. I think maybe once I met someone who was diabetic, a little kid. Hell, there are professional athletes who are diabetic. Dr. Clown: There are a lot of high profile people who are diabetic. JAKE: Who are some other high profile diabetics? Dr. Clown: Mary Tyler Moore. JAKE: How long? Dr. Clown: Like 30 years. She had diabetics in the TV show. George Lucas. He is a denial diabetic. JAKE: How do we know he is diabetic? Dr. Clown: I don’t know. He denies it. I think it is interesting. A lot of other people, sports and different things that have a certain disease somehow it is like they become a poster child for it and it is more high profile than it is with diabetes. Somehow it is like it doesn’t exist because it is not real and you can control it. JAKE: You might know somebody for a long time and not know they are a diabetic. Some people are very low profile. Dr. Clown: Have you had any trouble traveling internationally with needles and insulin and stuff like that? JAKE: Oh, I heard about that early on from my nurses so I am just always over prepared. I mean, how they measure the units differently, stuff like that? 100 DL versus 1,000. Dr. Clown: Any image problems with the needles? JAKE: Oh, you mean just the travel. Just having syringes and people thinking you are a drug person. Dr. Clown: Yes, things like that. JAKE: Never, never. Just millions of people do it so it is not a problem. A couple of times, international travel, sometimes the security people will say is there anything that might arouse our suspicion in your suitcase? Did you get any electronics fixed. They ask all the questions. Then sometimes I will volunteer. I’ll say, by the way I have syringes in there, I am diabetic. They always shrug it off so I assume it is no big deal. The thing you have to be careful with is that it is my understanding that the syringes in Europe,you are taking units, you are drawing certain of insulin. If you use the wrong kind of syringe, you are not drawing the same amount of insulin. Scott you might know more. SCOTT: 100 versus U80 60, 40. Insulin comes in three different ways. Everybody that has gone on insulin is U100. JAKE: So even overseas now it is all U100? SCOTT: I don’t know. I never buy insulin when I travel overseas. JAKE: French insulin. SCOTT: You should always use the same brand of insulin. JAKE: Oh really? I didn’t even know that. I do actually use the same brand. Who all makes it other than Lilly? SCOTT: Novalin Nordus and between the two of them, it is 90% of the world. Then, there are some countries that insist on having insulin made in their own country like Japan and France. JAKE: Have you tested them out? Have you compared? SCOTT: No. I prefer Novo over Lilly but I use Lilly. I think Novo is a higher ethical company than Lilly. Dr. Clown: Then why do you use Lilly? SCOTT: Because that is really all you can get in this country. Lilly does what they have to make sure that they are the only insulin that you can get in the US. They are not good people. They are not the diabetic friend. They are the diabetic blood suckers. Please don’t quote me on that. JAKE: And don’t quote me on this. The price of humalog seems to have jumped up in the past few months. SCOTT: It is patented influence. JAKE: Which is really convenient for me because I never know when the hell I am going to be eating. SCOTT: If you have to take insulin exactly when you eat, you shouldn’t take the CF engineer. I like the natural stuff. You ever try natural insulin? JAKE: I used to use natural insulin but I am not a natural blonde either. SCOTT: If there were a cure for diabetes, how much would you be willing to pay for it? JAKE: Quite a bit. SCOTT: That is actually a semi-serious question. If you go into the hospital for a week and when you are out, you never have to worry about diabetes again, what is that worth to you? JAKE: I mean off the top of my head, in the tens of thousands of dollars but I don’t know. I don’t know. If I was a kid in the projects and I just to had rough around. The thing is I think it is going to be worth more to people who have a tougher time controlling it. What I really can’t wait for in the meanwhile is the blood sugar watch where your watch will monitor it. I got this new meter that has 15 ticks, 15 seconds, the fast tape. I test myself so much more now because it is so much quicker. I went to my high school reunion and I bumped into an old friend. I go what do you do. He said, I work for a company named Life Scan. I go, oh I use your product. Then he sent me a bunch of free meters and test strips Dr. Clown: I can’t think of anything else to ask you. Thanks for your time.