If I were running a diabetes book club, Andie Dominick's new memoir Needles would not be my selection as the book of the month. For a book this powerful, this well written, and this interesting, that would be faint praise indeed. This book would have to be the selection as the book of the year.

‘Is 29 low?’

This book is a highly moving memoir of growing up with diabetes. When Andie was a girl, the syringes that her sister Denise used to inject herself with insulin fascinated her. She secretly played with them and even gave her dolls shots before meals, just like Denise had to do.

All too soon Andie had her own syringes. Denise had been diagnosed with diabetes in 1961 at the age of 2. Andie was diagnosed in 1980 at the age of nine.

This book is the story of her sister, herself, her family, and how they struggled with diabetes. A rebellious teenage, Andie skipped her shots to lose weight and subsequently needed several operations on her eyes. Denise, even more defiant, paid for her freedom with her life.

Anger
My favorite part of the book is the chapter "Anger." In an ambulance on the way to a hospital one medic tests Andie and gets a reading of 29. The medic asks his partner, "Is 29 low?"

At the hospital she insists that her husband, Doug, drive her to another hospital after not only the ambulance drivers but also nurses and doctors don't listen when she tells them her blood sugar is low and they aren't treating her. That's taking responsibility for yourself.

Andie writes in Needles that she had a tubal ligation rather than take the risk of having children who might inherit a diabetes gene. As one reviewer noted, the book has no facile happy ending.

Adoption
However, life goes on. When I suggested to Andie that she and Doug should consider adoption, she wrote back, "Ironically, Doug and I are finishing our licensing for adoption approval next week. All we have left is the home study. There are twin boys—three years old—we are seriously considering. One has brittle diabetes and is a victim of shaken baby syndrome."

Subsequently, she wrote me that they are now raising the two boys. "Nothing will be final for quite a while, but it looks like everything should go as planned. And if I had written the book a few years later, they would have been in the final chapter."

It wouldn't surprise me if Andie has another great book in her about her adopted boys and how they change her life. However, her next book, she says, is going to be a thriller set in a small town. "I spent three plus years writing about diabetes and my sister's death in the book and essays," Andie tells me. "I'm craving something different."

This article originally appeared in Diabetes Digest, May 1999.

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