Are you someone who wants to make live better for people who live in “food deserts”? Do you shop at farmers’ markets? Do you ever talk with the produce manager at your local grocery store? Do you have an extra bag to spare?
Then I have an adventure for you!
So I have this little pituitary tumor called Anastasia. She got me diagnosed with Cushing’s syndrome back in 2009; in 2010, I learned that she’s inoperable because of something called “empty sella syndrome,” which is a thinning of the skull around the pituitary gland that allows cerebral spinal fluid leakage, creates cerebral spinal fluid pressure against the tumor, and makes it tough for a removal incision to heal up.
Although I wasn’t exhibiting any signs of diabetes or pre-diabetes at the time, my endocrinologists told me that diabetes was a pretty sure bet at some point. Well, that time came tsunami-style a few weeks ago.
So I’m stuck with Anastasia until my brilliant world-class neurosurgeon comes up with a solution. In the meantime, as you might imagine, I’m also incredibly poor. My Social Security Disability benefits are not so bad as things go, but you know how it is. There are a lot of medical bills (Medicare’s great, but there are still copays and deductibles and co-insurance), prescriptions, dental bills (due to parathyroid tumors nibbling my bones and teeth), pootie care … just basic life.
Knowing I was on thin ice, a dear friend “kidnapped” me for “an adventure” last January and helped me realize I was in full denial about the need to visit a food bank. Now I get most of my groceries at a local food pantry. It’s really a fantastic place. The people are AMAZING! So very kind, always a smile and someone who carries the groceries to my car. I love them all and am so utterly grateful for how much these bags of food and the kindness they come with have improved my quality of life. After I told them about a fever dream in which Jeff Goldblum and I were on a train together sewing quilts for babies whose families visited that food pantry, the staff always ask me about my latest dreams! (They enjoyed another great one about being stuffed into a Volkswagen with half a dozen Ukrainian students headed to a Beatles cover concert while playing miniature musical instruments, all the while thinking to myself, “What else would I rather be doing than whizzing down a highway playing a miniature harmonica and learning to sing ‘Hey, Jude’ in Ukrainian? It’s BLISS!”)
Beatles hits aside, being a diabetic who depends on a food pantry is quite a challenge! There’s always a generous bag of great food, but a lot of it is bread, pasta, rice, beans — perfect in many ways, but not so great for someone who can’t eat sugar and other carbs.
My endocrinologist … well, you know, I love her with a passion that burns with the heat of a thousand fiery suns. She has a different hair color every time I see her. She dresses in neon colors. She adores cats. She never just orders some lab work and looks it over for the first time while we’re in the exam room together; she orders the lab work ahead of time and has it all processed in her head before I show up for my checkup. She asks me about my life, other medical conditions besides the endocrine sitch, she talks about grandchildren, she interacts with me holistically — like a real, live human being who lives in the real world.
We were talking last week about some ways to maintain a low-sugar/low-carb diet when you’re poor. She asked me what I could do to get more fresh produce into my meals, and I said, “Well, hmmm … maybe I could talk with my neighbor, who packs and delivers some of those weekly produce boxes, and see whether I could get the slightly wilted beets and other produce that’s perfectly fine but not perfect enough to go into her boxes.”
I could see the lightbulb go off in my doc’s head! “Wow!” she said. “I have a mission for you.”
And now it’s OUR mission.
Here’s what she’s charged me with: Inviting friends who shop at local farmers’ markets to bring an extra bag with them, and filling that bag with “trick-or-treat” produce they can get from market vendors. Or talking with their grocery store produce managers about donating a bag of imperfect fruits and veggies. Then dropping the bag off at a local food pantry.
Part Deux of the mission is to talk with local food pantries about their clients who are diabetic or have other dietary restrictions and could use more veggies and fewer carbs. Ask them for a good time to drop off donations of fresh fruits and veggies. Determine whether they can offer the option of fewer carb-loaded foods to clients who can’t eat them, as long as you and your friends can drop off some options.
That’s it! That’s my mission: To ask you to change the climate of the food deserts in your community. And to encourage the number of produce bags to grow over the coming weeks and months.
My endo expects me to have metrics on this mission. And she’d like to see noticeable change in our local food banks by June. I believe we can make that change. Maybe just a tiny bit at first … but mustard seeds and all that, right?
So what do you say? Brother, can you spare a lime?