Besides carefully monitoring his sugar intake, James Coleman (left) says he walks to control his diabetes.
Thriving with Type 2 diabetes
THRIVING WITH TYPE 2
The education edge
JAMES COLEMAN, a Germantown resident and retired SEPTA bus driver, was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1989, and he has taken the situation in stride.
"My grandmother had it, and she lived to be 100," says Coleman, 68.
His father had diabetes, too, and Coleman remembers people of his parents' generation treating the disease as a big taboo. "They whispered about it," he says. "They used to hide diabetes."
"It's the same as whooping cough as far as I'm concerned - just something you have. And you have to take care of it . . . no candy, no regular soda, stuff like that.
"After I got used to that, it wasn't a problem."
After being diagnosed, Coleman turned into a keen food-label reader "to make sure I didn't accidentally pick something up not knowing there was sugar in it," he says. "It becomes a habit. You automatically pick up and start reading.
"You can actually have sugar if you eat it right - if you substitute carbohydrates for this, that and the other," he says. "You can work it out."
In his 35 years on the job with SEPTA, he hadn't been much of an exerciser. "I lived four blocks from the job and I drove to work," he says. Now he works walking into his routine. "I go to flea markets on weekends, and I do a lot of walking around there."
Coleman learned a lot of what he knows about managing his diabetes from a class at Albert Einstein Medical Center, one of dozens of diabetes-education programs in the region that have been recognized for excellence by the American Diabetes Association. (To find one near you, call the ADA help line at 1-800-342-2383, or visit www.diabetes.org.)
When his doctor recommended the class, Coleman signed up, figuring, "What do I have to lose?
"The best I could do is learn more, and I did," he says. "I learned more."
He'd recommend it to anyone with diabetes who wants to take charge of his own health and longevity. "I don't expect to live to be 100," Coleman says, "but it's a possibility." *
