Debbie Allen can play the steady and knowledgeable Catherine Avery on “Grey’s Anatomy” but when diabetes beat her real family, no preparation could get ready for the influence.
All that introduced to diabetes at a young age. “They always called it sugar. They said, ‘Papa Lloyd has sugar,'” she tells PS in an exclusive interview and reminded her grandfather’s experience of the condition. “He worked on a railway and he would come home and he was not very secret to giving himself the shot (by insulin) … I remember that as a little girl I saw many, many times my grandfather gives herself the shot.”
She was told that the medicine he took would help him – that his body did not process sugar and the shot would correct it. “I don’t know if I even understood it then, but I later understood it, when I saw the complications in my family. And I saw a lot,” says Allen.
Allen’s grandfather, father and aunt all had diabetes and died at relatively early ages from the condition.
“Dad had died at 63 years old and he had eaten half a ice cream that night he died – half a strawberry ice cream. So when I visit his grave, I take him a pint of strawberry ice cream,” says Allen. Then her aunt, who also lived with diabetes, died in her arms a few years later. “They are very dramatic and very influencing emotional experiences for everyone to have,” she says.
“We have a habit in our world of just looking at someone and thinking, you can read a book after the cover, and it’s just so far from the truth.”
But not all experiences with diabetes are the same, says Allen. The majority of people with diabetes can live long and healthy lives with Lifestyle adjustments And treatment. And just as important to discuss, says Allen, is Stigma who is associated with the condition. Under a new panel with abbott to Celebrate his latest “above bias” short filmAllen said: “The misconception is a big part of it. We have a habit in our world of just looking at someone and thinking, you can read a book after the cover, and it’s just so far from the truth.”
At the panel and screening, the participants were put through a simulation experience where Waitstaff made the off-hand comments about the food on our plate and appearance to show how pervasive stigma around diabetes can be. “You don’t look like you have diabetes”, “you look healthy – here, eat this” and “no sugar for you”, I was told when I knocked on the passed hors d’oeuvres.
These are the types of comments that people with diabetes hear regularly, Allen said. After being recently diagnosed with pre-diabetes, Allen knows this from first and foremost and hoping to change it, not only in her work with Abbott, but also by using her platform on “Grey’s anatomy.”
According to one Abbott Survey“85% of people living with diabetes say they have seen errors about diabetes in the media, including on television programs, movies and social media, and 40% of people considered that diabetes was often used as a punchline for a joke.” But Allen says that “Gray’s Anatomy” is the right platform to handle to the fitness with the right mix of accuracy and entertainment. They have shown the condition briefly in some sections, but Allen wants to put diabetes forward and mine.
“I have seen that the way of thinking on the show that Shonda Rhimes created, that Meg Marinis is now the show runner for, has the predisposition to handle what really happens in the world,” says Allen. And it should include diabetes.
It’s as simple as having a conversation and figuring out the right history and characters, she says, and she is convinced that they will do it justice. “The stories we make are quite extraordinary and also very authentically real,” Allen continues. “I don’t know where this story will go and over and when it will go – but if that happens I will feel good about it.”
Alexis Jones (She/her) is senior health and fitness editor on ps. During his seven years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed passions and areas of expertise around mental health, women’s health and fitness, racial and ethnic differences in health care and chronic conditions. Before she came to PS, she was a senior editor at Health Magazine. Her second bylines are available at Women’s Health, Prevention, Marie Claire and more.
