Elizabeth Perkins tells how she control her blood glucose Part 1

I'm a happier person than before ! - Elizabeth Perkins

Actress Elizabeth Perkins spent more than a decade feeling constantly
run down—and having doctor after doctor tell her there was absolutely
nothing wrong. Then, in 2005, at the age of 44, she finally learned that
she had type 1 diabetes. Diagnosed while filming the first season of
her critically acclaimed Showtime series Weeds—an instant cult
smash—she initially struggled to accept her illness, hiding her disease
from coworkers and giving herself insulin injections on the sly, alone
in her on-set trailer.
Today, Perkins has come a long way, both in getting a handle on her
diabetes and in her much-admired turn as Celia Hodes—Weeds’ resident
acid-tongued tart of a suburban housewife, whose best friend is the
neighborhood drug dealer—which has earned her two best supporting
actress Emmy nominations in the past two years. This fall, on hiatus
from the show and taking some much-needed “me time” to putter around
the garden and helm carpool, the blunt, charismatic 47-year-old mother
of four spoke about handling diabetes in Hollywood, why she can’t wait
to get an insulin pump, and how her diagnosis ended up changing her life
for the better.

When did you start feeling ill, and how were you finally diagnosed? Believe it or not, I hadn’t really felt well since I had my daughter who just turned 16. I had a
lot of pain, I always felt run down,thirsty, but none of my blood work showed anything except slightly elevated glucose levels. It got to the point where I thought I had some sort of psychosomatic illness. I started seeing a therapist because I’d had a series of endocrinologists who all said “there’s nothing wrong with you.”
Finally I agreed to have a hysterectomy and it wasn’t until we did the preliminary
workup and I had a blood glucose level of 690 that somebody said “Oh, you know what, you have diabetes.” Looking back on it, I don’t want to be bitter and say
“Hey, you know, I exhibited some high glucose levels at different points, but nobody took it seriously.” [But] the more I’ve learned about latent autoimmune diabetes
and diabetes in middle age, if you present any kind of high glucose level, you should be monitored extensively,and that didn’t happen.And because I was so misinformed,
it didn’t send an alarm to me. Tell me about being diagnosed during your first
season on Weeds.I felt completely overwhelmed that first year on the show, and I didn’t tell anybody I had diabetes. All of a sudden I was in my trailer at
work, testing my glucose, and shooting myself up, and I was really scared and felt very alone and completely in over my head. And it wasn’t until about 6 months later
that I thought, “Now why did I do that?” I guess I felt like it was going to hurt my career somehow,like suddenly I was going to become the sick person, uninsurable.
There was the fear of, “Oh well, that’s why she doesn’t look good, that’s why she’s tired, that’s why she has to take breaks,” and I didn’t want that stigma, and it
took me a good year and a half to embrace this and say, proudly, “I’m diabetic, and I’m in control of my disease.”

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