Monkey See, Monkey Do

Last night I was flipping through channels, killing a bit of time before I took my weary body to bed.  I watched a show about a trans-gender case, got bored, moved on.  I came across the "Celebrity Apprentice".  I have never seen the regular "Apprentice", let alone the celebrity version but I noticed that Brett Michaels was on.  I had read that he was going to be on the show and he would be donating his winnings to a diabetes charity.  I don't really follow the guy very much. I did enjoy listening to Poison back in the day when I had no clue about diabetes or the fact that the lead singer of the band lived with this disease. I decided to check it out and see what the show was all about. 


It turned out that the show was divided into women versus men.  They each had to run a restaurant for a set number of hours and raise as much money for charity as they could.  The team that raised the most won all of the money.  The show progressed and then they showed a preview of what was coming.  Brett Michaels was going to go low on tv! Now how cool is that?? Not just talk about it but diabetes was going to be real and on tv that night! I called for my youngest son to come and watch the show with me. I told him "Hurry up, Brett Michaels is going to go low on tv! How cool is that???" He thought it was pretty cool and even knew who Brett Michaels was.  


While we were waiting, I had my son test.  He hadn't been doing much but it was soon going to be time for bed and I wanted to have a clue as to where he was sitting blood sugar wise.  It appears that waiting for Brett to go low had a greater impact in our house than I realized.  When my son tested he was low as well! Crap but at least he was still up when it happened.  He grabbed himself some juice and we sat back waiting for the "low" scene to appear...and we waited.  It turns out that they were showing you what would happen in about another half hour or more on the show! In the meantime, my son retested.  He was now LOWER than when he drank his juice! What the???????  Okay, this time Mom is going to get the glucose source.  "Do you want juice or tablets?"  "Juice would be could" was the reply.  Alright then, a big glass of juice it is.  We would get this low out of the basement one way or another.  


We continued to watch the show.  Brett finally goes low.  He is given a coke with a nice amount of ice and stands off to the side to drink it.  My oldest is watching him saying "He is low! What the heck is taking him so long to drink that? Would you finish that buddy? You are low!"  Okay, that child is well trained! It appeared that Brett recovered from his low much faster than my son.  Three glasses of juice later the child is finally in range.  We sit back and watch Brett Michaels' reaction as he is told that his team has won and he will get to give $100,000 to his diabetes charity.  Awesome!


He is visibly moved.  As he walks out of the boardroom, he continues to say that he has lost so many of his friends to this disease.  So many of the people that he grew up with have died because of this disease.  My heart breaks.  Here is this man who is out there (and from what I understand some of his reality tv stuff really puts him "out there"), in the public eye and so tormented over this disease that drives us insane each day.  Fame and celebrity may allow him to win a great amount of money for charity but it does not protect him from experiencing the lows of this disease.  Congratulations Brett! I may even have to try to stay awake to watch again next week.