Being a nephrologist, I reminded myself, was my choice.
It’s just that, as I looked into her eyes, I couldn’t tell if she could see me back.
What I wanted to say, it required eye contact.
How do you tell a 36-year-old, one leg down from the sugar, that the other may have to go too?
Of course, being a nephrologist, I didn’t know for sure. But the smell told me more than any vascular surgeon could.
My job, mostly, revolved around blood cleaning, also known as prolonging life.
It sounds fancy, but that was the easy part.
No one prepares you for the poverty.
No one tells you about the depression.
Then, there was the tobacco, clogging the pipes that were already clogged by the sugar. That’s why the limbs would fall off.
Type I diabetes, in that world, meant death by subtraction—with clean blood.
It was 2021, and I had decided to come up for air, something known in human resources as work part time.
It wasn’t so much the oxygen that I needed, just a view outside the rabbit hole.
I had a lot of catching up to do, as the molecular mechanisms of kidney disease don’t necessarily teach you about what’s going on in the world.
I started to devour books, followed by the internet. It was the pre-ChatGPT era, and I was the guy scraping blogs, Reddit, and YouTube, all for my very human brain.
Categories had to be filled.
I stumbled across all sorts of stories.
I learned about a girl from the Bronx, pretty smart I’m sure.
She landed at Princeton—and then on the Supreme Court.
Sonia Sotomayor is now 72.
She’s been living with type I diabetes since age seven.
I also learned about a kid from New Jersey, pretty talented I’m sure.
He wrote tunes with his brothers and then on his own.
Nick Jonas is now 34.
He’s been on insulin since age 13.
Finally, in my desire to be more worldly, I learned about a boy from Hamburg, Germany, rather athletic I’m sure.
He had a particular gift for tennis.
Alexander Zverev is now 29.
He’s been a diabetic since age four.
And he just won his second Grand Slam.
Being a nephrologist, I learned, can come with hope.
You just have to know where to look.
