Hearing you’ve just been diagnosed with diabetes can be difficult. And painful. Still, February’s Divabetic podcast guest, Fran Carpentier, describes her experience like a scene from a Fellini movie.
The Brooklyn-born media maven was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age fourteen. Fran remembers the weeks before her diagnosis, “having rapid weight loss, unquenchable thirst, and exhaustion. it was bad.”Although her type 1 diabetes diagnosis was life-changing, Fran admits that her Italian mother, Stella, provided some much-needed yet unintended comic relief in the doctor’s office. “Naturally, I was scared and very nervous,” Fran recalls. “However, when the doctor uttered the diagnosis—’Frances has diabetes‘— my mother fainted and collapsed onto the floor. Her sister, my Aunt Elizabeth, and I had to pick her up. We kept fanning my mom while Dr. Handelsman—a renowned diabetologist of the time—attempted to reassure her about my diagnosis. First, he tried to calm down my mother by telling her that I was fortunate to be diagnosed when I was and not forty years earlier. He went on to explain that the reason I was ‘lucky’ was because today we had insulin; a few decades earlier, I’d be dead. When my mother heard the word ‘dead,’ she collapsed and fainted again.”
The doctor pulled Fran aside and said, “I usually put a newly diagnosed child with juvenile diabetes [which is what type 1 was called in those days] in the hospital for a week.” Back in 1969, which is when Fran was diagnosed, hospitalization for diabetes was pretty typical. Dr. Handelsman continued, “But I can tell that, if I put you in the hospital, I would need at least two beds—one for you, and one for your mother.”
The good doctor added, “So, instead of sending you to the hospital, my nurse will teach you how to give yourself insulin injections, then I’m going to send you home. Come back tomorrow and we’ll teach you more about how your daily life will be from now on.”
The Carpentier family’s theatrics continued after they got home from the doctor’s office. “That same evening, my mother’s ten sisters came over to our house to ‘mourn’ me,” says Fran. “To this day, I blame their reaction on the ignorance and fear that was associated with diabetes then. Sadly, a lot of ignorance and fear are still prevalent today.”
If all that extra drama seems almost too much to handle, then you don’t know Fran, who went on to explain, “Later on in bed that first night, I told myself that God must have sent diabetes to me for a reason. Somehow, that outlook served to motivate me in managing my diabetes for the past fifty years.”
She adds, “I think I had enough of a sense of self to not be ashamed of my condition. I spent a lot of time in the early days allaying my parents’ fears.”
For the past fifty years, Fran Carpentier has been an outspoken diabetes advocate, a passionate fundraiser, and a Divabetic inspiration in her personal and professional life.
For close to three decades, Fran worked as the Senior Editor at Parade, the national Sunday newspaper magazine that, during her tenure, reached more than 70 million readers every week. Fran had the opportunity to meet celebrities, best-selling authors, thought leaders, leading doctors, and top scientists in diabetes. “As a journalist, I had direct access that got me in front of as many diabetes experts as possible. Then, every November, I would oversee an article on diabetes in the Sunday issue. Our goal was to share with our millions of readers what was new in diabetes and where everyone—including people living with diabetes, their families, their friends, their co-workers—could find hope.”
In 2006, I met Fran Carpentier for the first time when she attended Divabetic Makeover Your Diabetes national outreach program at Gotham Hall in New York City. At the time, she was still working for Parade. She remembers attending our ‘Glam More, Fear Less’ style event offering one-on-one diabetes education with free makeover services as “the fun and fabulous.” In addition, she says, “The men and women at the Divabetic program had really great energy.”
Hear more of Fran’s funny and fascinating memories of living with type 1 diabetes on Divabetic’s February podcast.