LITTLE ROCK — Canadian country singer George Canyon might be familiar to American audiences as a finalist on the USA cable series, Nashville Star. But the 54 boys and girls at Camp Aldersgate’s diabetes camp in Little Rock know the big guy differently - as one of them, a Type 1 diabetic.
Canyon, 39, sang for the campers, watched them paddle canoes, and talked about how it is to have a medical condition that calls for care and determination, not limits.
“I came to talk to the kids,” he said. Square-jawed with an athlete’s build, he tips his cowboy hat with an ease that shows it’s the real thing, the same hat he wears at home on his horse ranch.
Canyon looks in top health, looks rugged. He knows how he looks, and he works at it, lifting weights. Finding out he had diabetes at age 14 nearly crushed him, he said. But it gave him a sense of determination he might not have had otherwise.
“I want to show them what you can look like 26 years later,” he said - 26 years of living with diabetes - “if you take care of yourself.”
He worked at tough jobs including law enforcement to support his wife and two children, singing on the side. Nashville Star gave him the break he needed. Canadian radio made hits of Canyon’s “Drinkin’ Thinkin’” and “I’ll Never Do Better Than You,” and Americans find him on dozens of YouTube videos.
Diabetes doesn’t show on the screen, but it’s the reason he keeps a bottle of orange juice handy on stage - a quick source of balance in case of low blood sugar.
Canyon’s latest, “I Believe in Angels,” sums up the message he takes to other diabetics, especially children: I pray someday they will see/ They can be anything they want to be.
Camp Aldersgate is an outdoor experience for children with a variety of problems including asthma, autism and cerebral palsy. Its week long diabetes camp, earlier this month, is the state’s only camp just for children whose bodies can’t regulate blood sugar. They cope with the risk of sick, bad-tempered days of high blood sugar, and scary lows.
A blood sugar reading of 70 to 130 is about normal for most people before a meal, according to the American Diabetes Association. Canyon cites his lowest ever, 28, and highest, 792, “and that’s when they put me in the hospital.”
He grew up with dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot. But he wasn’t feeling right, and a week in the hospital resulted in the diagnosis that he is diabetic - that he will need insulin the rest of his life. At 14, the doctors told him to forget flying. The disease gave him a less romantic new goal, learning to give himself insulin shots to control his blood sugar.
“I treated my diabetes conventionally,” Canyon said, “which meant I took the needle five or six times a day, and I did that for 21 years.”
“No two diabetics are the same,” he told the campers, but the better answer for him has been an insulin pump that gives him the medicine he needs automatically.
Campers ages 8 to 13 gathered for Canyon’s show that opened with “Ring of Fire,” giving way to the “chat” that he flew in from Canada to have with them.
“I’ve been diabetic longer than you’ve been alive,” he said, sharing experiences that only another diabetic would recognize, let alone tell as a joke. Ever stick your finger to get a blood sample for testing, and have droplets of blood squeeze out from other holes in the same finger? Yeah? Ever squirt yourself in the face?Yeah? Him, too. Funny, huh? - funny like a secret in the room, something most people wouldn’t understand.
“Isn’t that awesome?” Canyon said.
These kids knew all about blood sugar monitors - palmsize gizmos that test a drop of blood - and Canyon made the daily testing a contest to cheer for:
“Who tests four times a day? ... six times? ... eight ... 10 ... 12 ... 14 ... up high, be proud,you can’t test enough.”
SWEET DREAMS
Camper Marley (last name withheld under camp rules), 11, tested her blood sugar right after canoeing on the camp’s lake.
“It was 163,” she reported, “a little high,” possibly a result of the morning’s excitement.
Blood sugar can be mysterious. Diabetics watch what they eat, measure by ounces, count the carbohydrates, all to help keep their blood sugar at a healthy level. But other things besides food can affect the balance - stress for one, even the stress of feeling happier than usual.
Blue-eyed Marley liked Canyon’s visit to the camp.
“He uses a different pump than me,” she said. The important thing to her is that he has a pump, like many of the other campers do. Pumps come in a variety of brands, and like cell phone cases, different colors.
If her shirt pulled up an inch, and people at camp saw the boxy insulin pump at her side, they wouldn’t say, “What’s ... that?” Or, “What’s wrong with you?” At diabetes camp, they might ask the way that Canyon does, what color?
“I think he’s a really good musician, and a wonderful adult to look up to,” Marley said. “I want to be a musician when I grow up. I like to sing. I like to see another person like me do it.”
Canyon’s accordion accompanist, Mike Little, has been on the road with him for years, and says the guitar playing country rocker has some good days and bad.
“He takes good care of himself,” Little says. Once in a while, Canyon’s blood sugarslips low in the pressure of a concert. The tell-tale sign is, “he’ll start blowing lyrics.” The crowd can’t tell, Little says, not unless they know the song well enough to sing along. But it’s time for Canyon to “pound down” an orange juice.
Low blood sugar, Canyon says, can turn a country ballad into a suddenly light-headed, “five-minute jazz odyssey,” but so what? He’s on stage, living the dream he had from the first time he picked up a guitar.
A bad day, “I call it falling off the road,” he said. The road is still there, and his job is to get on.
CORE ISSUE
“Children want to belong in the group,” Canyon said. “When they get a disability, it ostracizes them.” He remembers a birthday party at which every other kid had a chunk of cake, and he got an apple (less sugar), “and you might as well have punched me in the head.”
But the childhood memory taught him something: “80 percent of the disease is psychological.” It’s mostly about attitude, and attitude - unlike the so far incurable fact of diabetes - is something a person can change.
“How many people do you meet who don’t understand diabetes,” he asked the campers, and a flurry of hands went up. “How many think they can catch it from you?” (The disease is not contagious.) “Well, it’s important that you teach them.”
How many have heard there is something they can’t do because of diabetes? He heard he couldn’t fly, and it made him earn a private pilot’s license, and it makes him keep his health in line to pass his physicals like every other pilot.
“What you want to do is show them you’re able to do it,” Canyon told the group, “and do it better than anyone else can.”
UPS AND DOWNS
Diabetes camp is sponsored by the American Diabetes Association, and Canyon’s appearance by Animas, a maker of insulin pumps.
The singer’s schedule hustled him back on the plane the same day, en route to a series of shows in Canada.
Out of sight from the children, he stifled a yawn, admitting to a bit of a slump.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with diabetes,” Canyon said. “I think it’s my travel schedule.”
Family, Pages 31 on 07/21/2010