Peter Dreimanis is a multidisciplinary artist, perhaps best known as a co-founder of the Juno Award-winning band July Talk.
In June 2020, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) as an adult and had to learn to navigate the disease against the backdrop of lockdowns and uncertainty of the pandemic.
Peter was part of the Beyond the Numbers: Real stories of navigating mental health and T1D video series project, that captures real stories from people living with this disease, exploring how T1D affects their mental health and emotional well-being.
Peter recently sat down with Breakthrough T1D Canada to share his story of being diagnosed later in life, and how T1D has changed his life as an artist, partner and father.
Breakthrough T1D Canada: Tell us a little about when you were diagnosed.
Peter: Well, I got COVID at the very beginning of the pandemic. We’d been touring as a band for the better part of 12 years or so, and I was never someone to listen to my body. I didn’t have the skills to know what my body needed, to determine if something was wrong. I was better at silencing things – driving through pain, ignoring the signals to slow down etc.
A while before the pandemic shutdown, in January of 2020, my partner bought tickets to see my favourite team play in Buffalo. We went across the border and when we came home, we got incredibly sick, worse than I have ever been. It was an extreme illness. You know what a flu bug feels like, but I wasn’t plugged into the scientific news, wasn’t paying attention to the slowly emerging news about covid. So, all this to say, I got very sick for a couple weeks, and then slowly we approached the shutdown.
Around April, I started having people say I ‘looked great’, I looked like ‘I had been working out, lost weight’ – and I didn’t know what to make of it. One of my roommates was vegan, I’d been eating those meals, not going out for food, but I wasn’t really making lifestyle choices.
And always, I continued to just push through. I didn’t pay it much thought until around May/June – I was experiencing extreme thirst, I was eating ice cream, eating giant meals of sourdough bread and rice, and still I was losing weight.
I attributed it to being a workaholic in a state struggling to accept that we had to slow down. We (July Talk) had been working on an album. I was in denial, and still just trying to make the album work.
And I continued to worsen, I would have days where I would be drinking 10-12 litres of water a day, I couldn’t get enough. I would walk up the stairs with equipment and think I would pass out. We did huge shows in summer 2020, we put together a socially distanced concert experience, drive-in and broadcast at the drive in. It was a massive undertaking; I worked full-time for 3 months to try and figure out how to pull it off. So, I was laser focused on that. And I remember I would go down for a nap at like 6pm, so exhausted I couldn’t think, and I wouldn’t wake up until the next morning. I was just so exhausted, so thirsty, so confused.
And yet – it wasn’t until a professional photographer took some photos to help promote the show that I realized, wow, I look really skinny. I weighed myself and I was 50lbs lighter. My partner had been on me about how thin I was looking. You could see my ribs. I had no frame of reference; I had never been rewarded for slowing down. But thank goodness I went and got blood tests and was immediately diagnosed – first with type 2.
I was initially put on metformin, and it obviously didn’t work. I fortunately was seen by an endocrinologist who immediately recognized it as type 1. So, I went on insulin therapy, and I still see this same endo today. I was connected with a DEC (diabetes education coordinator), and a nurse. I was weeks away from this show. They warned me that if I didn’t take this on (managing my T1D), I could die. My partner was and has been incredible, And I realize now how much T1D affects the people who love you. I harbour some shame and guilt around my will to take it on; for not truly recognizing, or perhaps accepting, the severity of the situation.
I did my first insulin shot two or three days before we went on stage, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was using fingerpricks (to measure blood glucose levels) at the time. I wasn’t taking it seriously right away. It’s truly a continuous lifestyle change, and I don’t think I really understood the gravity of that yet. I got through the shows somehow without going low. My adrenaline seems to send me up. In my experience touring since diagnosis, I always have juice on stage. I’m always going on stage at around 9 (blood glucose level) – my adrenaline has the opposite effect. So, when the adrenaline crashes, that’s when I need the fast-acting carbs.
As soon as this show was done, I went north of the city (Toronto), turned off my emails and phone, did Zoom calls and really started to learn what it means to live with type 1 diabetes.
Breakthrough T1D Canada: How have you adapted since then to your new normal with T1D?
Peter: I felt so supported. I was totally floored by the system that springs into action, I would have rather it be in person instead of over Zoom etc., but it was absolutely stunning how quickly they were able to get us up to speed. Once I was ready, I made every effort to learn how to carb count, etc., – I had notebooks full of stuff. It really takes a while to learn. I liken it to when you’re a new driver and the insurance company tells you that you ‘will get in an accident’. My T1D ‘accident’ was that I had a low (hypoglycemic episode) that resulted in a grand mal seizure, and it was just miscounting my carbs, there was more learning to do. I didn’t know then what I know now.
When it happened, I was on a long phone call with my parents, and I started feeling sweaty and shaky. By the time I was trying to get juice, I was reading at 2.4 (a very low blood glucose level). And by then it was too late, and I went into seizure.
It was a horrifically traumatic experience for me and my family. For a while after, I had panic around lows. I definitely accepted going higher for about a year after that, because of how scary that experience was. I felt like a ticking time bomb that could explode at any minute. All you have to do is look into your partner’s eyes to know how scary it was for them. But knowing that danger gave me a better understanding of what the body experiences when it goes low, and what it actually means to live with this chronic condition. I can handle a low now. But it took time to have the clarity to understand it wasn’t going to be like this forever. And I had some consequences from that episode, like not being able to drive for six months, losing trust in my body etc. But I see it now as a profound life experience, and I grew up a lot.
To speak more about the balance of it, and this is something I give a lot of thought to, we are all simply by waking up in the morning, we are all in a place of trusting our bodies to function as we think they should do. Our bodies are one of the most complex systems in existence, and the pancreas producing insulin, and all the rest of our parts doing what they should do – we never truly think about it. It’s an incredible privilege, the way we think we’re going to be okay is by believing we will be OK.
And for those of us with T1D, that might take technologies, or therapy or whatever you need to rebuild that trust. We have a contract with our bodies, and sometimes I think about it, like when we’re running down a street, there are moments when we’re airborne. And we trust that we’ll land. And I think about how to keep that trust and cultivate that trust in your body. Because it’s the only way we can get through life. And now as someone with T1D, I need to spend more time building that trust because it’s the only way to be OK.
Breakthrough T1D Canada: What T1D research excites you the most right now?
Peter: I don’t consider myself a fully informed person on T1D research, but I’ve read about smart insulins that might eliminate carb counting, and this intrigues me. To free myself of that constant testing (blood glucose levels), to no longer live in a world where you must understand everything you’re eating, to be precise about insulin against that. In a restaurant it’s a guessing game (how many carbs are in a meal). Life doesn’t work that way, in exacts. When you live an untraditional lifestyle, I’m not in a 9-5 job, I’m a parent, sometimes I want to eat my kids’ leftovers without having to calculate percentages.
I say godspeed to the researchers who might be able to eliminate the 10K thoughts I have in a day. Not thinking that much, that would be freedom that I can’t comprehend, and I think especially about people who have lived with T1D for most of their life. It would be incredible. I eagerly await this. I feel very grateful for my CGM and insulin pump, and in all honesty, they drive me nuts, a lot of the time I hate it, but also feel lucky in that I have only experienced T1D when this tech exists, in this unbelievably progressive time. I don’t take that for granted at all. I feel lucky in that way.
Breakthrough T1D Canada: Do you have any last thoughts to share with your fellow T1D community?
Peter: Having the opportunity to hear other people share so openly and honestly as part of the Beyond the Numbers video project turned out to be more helpful than I could have realized before we started.
Talking with others is so therapeutic, none of us are perfect, and we will have many hard and challenging days and times living with T1D. I encourage people to be kind to themselves, to share as much as they are comfortable when things are hard, and to reach out for support when it’s needed. It’s a journey, and there will be bumps along the path, but the support is there.
Follow Peter on IG both at @peter_dreams and @julytalk
