Nicole Johnson paused during a recent visit to a Ft. Lauderdale TV studio.
The internationally known beauty queen quickly figured how many calories she was going to consume for lunch and then pushed a button on a small device she was wearing around her waist.
“Let’s eat,” Miss America 1999 proclaimed with a big smile, and proceeded to enjoy roast chicken and some fruit. She had just administered the proper amount of insulin, by means of a pump, to keep her blood sugar stable and ward off the short-term and long-term effects of a disease that can kill.
After lunch, Johnson changed outfits and resumed taping with Mr. Food, known offstage as Art Ginsburg. They recorded three vignettes: The first on healthy eating for those with diabetes, the second on how a small amount of meat can be stretched to become a healthy and complete main dish and the third on how some desserts, such as apple crisp, can fit the diabetic lifestyle.
“I get a great deal of mail from viewers who want recipes appropriate for people with diabetes,” Ginsburg said during a break on the set. “It’s important, too, to remember that moderation is the key for everyone.”
He added: “Having Nicole join me on these shows is a delight. She’s someone who can make a difference in many people’s lives.”
Johnson has been living with diabetes for many years, but she didn’t know it at first. Hers is a form of the disease called Type 1, which is not the result of overeating or a sedentary lifestyle, but rather most likely a genetic predisposition to the disease.
The trouble began in 1993, when Johnson was a college sophomore. At first, her doctors thought she was anemic. Then they speculated she had a particularly severe case of the Beijing flu. Then they believed she had appendicitis.
“I was so weak and so sick that I had to be taken to the hospital,” Johnson said. “My pancreas shut down.”
Her blood sugar reading was 510, when normal was considered 140 or lower. Diabetes experts now consider 126 to be the upper limit for normal.
Doctors stabilized her. She was discharged after a week and told to follow a set of rules and regulations about eating and injecting. Two insulin shots a day became four and then five to keep a stable blood sugar level.
“It wasn’t easy. I was terribly afraid of needles and injections. And my life had become needles and injections.”
Johnson’s diabetes came on in subtle ways for a college student busy with the rigors of classes and a hectic lifestyle. She developed an unquenchable thirst and blurry vision, and in a month’s time lost more than 20 pounds even though she was eating “everything I could get my hands on.” Her figure, that of a model, had taken on an emaciated look.
The transition from being oblivious to her disease to worrying about it constantly made life almost unbearable, Johnson said.
“I had such deep emotional and psychological struggles, and I fell into a deep depression, partially because I saw what this had done to my parents,” she said. “They had tears in their eyes for a month as they watched me struggle to regain my health and cope with my disease. They still suffer from guilt, even though there is no reason for them to feel that way.”
To ease the burden of injections during her undergraduate career at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and on the competition circuit as well, Johnson got an insulin pump. Worn around the waist, it’s smaller than a pack of cigarettes and delivers carefully adjusted doses by pushing a button. Set the proper amount of insulin which is determined after estimating calories, push the button and eat.
“It sat in the closet,” Johnson said. “I was afraid to use it.”
Then, in 1997, she entered the Miss Virginia competition. The stress and complicated schedule proved to be too much for her.
“I had a severe reaction to my insulin on the evening after we competed in the first round,” she said. “My blood sugar was so low it was not readable. I lapsed into a coma for 45 minutes. People were pouring soda and juices down my throat. They didn’t know what else to do except call for help.”
She again recovered quickly, and “within a week I was wearing the pump.”
“That was a defining moment of my life. I immediately had to accept I had diabetes and I had to take better care of myself,” Johnson said.
She did, and she kept alive the desire to compete. The thin pump was easily hidden beneath a bathing suit or evening gown.
Johnson made the top 10 in the Miss Virginia pageant that year, and was determined to do better.
