Dinner and a roast

Moore says matter-of-factly and with no self-pity that with type 1 diabetes, there is little chance for spontaneity in life. She chooses not to use the newer glucose monitors and insulin pumps that can reduce the burden by taking automatic readings for the patient and deliver a dose without a syringe. Instead, she still prefers using finger pricks and test tapes to measure her blood sugar and a syringe of insulin whenever it's needed. "You've got to always plan," she says. "It is a fact of life that if someone invites you out to dinner you have to think, 'What are they going to be doing when they serve you dinner? How quickly are they going to get it on the table from the time I arrive? When should I take my shot? What should I eat of what's available?'

" She says she has learned to carry a loaded syringe in her pocket, and if she eats a little more than expected, she can give herself a quick injection of insulin to level her blood sugar. "I shoot myself right through my clothes there at the table, right here in my thigh. I seldom wear white as a result," she says with a chuckle. But she does enjoy a little spontaneity from events such as the one she attended this month when she was honored by the historic theater group The Players club in Gramercy Park, in New York City. That's where her close friend Bernadette Peters, whom she talks about in her book, helped "roast" her and applaud her career achievements.

"That was fun," she says. "And I was so absorbed by what Dick Cavett and my dear friend Bernadette had to say about me." A sunny room off her living room houses an array of workout equipment, and Moore, who moves gracefully but slowly because of her lack of peripheral vision, says working out for an hour five to six days a week helps her stay fit and fight the disease.
As her vision has declined, she has been forced to give up her beloved ballet and horseback riding. But with her long-time trainer's guidance, she says, "I do a combination of treadmill (hands on the support rails because her balance isn't what it used to be), the elliptical machine, rowing and Pilates. I never get bored." Blood sugar dips after a workout sometimes, so she keeps orange juice on hand to sip afterward to push it back up. "In all these years, I've never gotten sick of orange juice," she says.

As she has gotten older, she says, her ability to sense a low-sugar moment coming on has lessened — she used to feel lightheaded and weak as a warning — and the episodes occur more often than in the past. That's dangerous because too-low blood sugar can lead to a life-threatening coma. A low sugar level "can happen while I sleep at night," she says, "and my husband will wake me up and make me sip some juice." Though Moore downplays diabetes' ravages on her eyesight and other parts of her body, it's hard to ignore a big bandage wrapped around her left hand. "Isn't that awful? I slammed a door — not on purpose — on my thumbnail, and I went to the doctor to show him, and it had already turned black so he had to go in there and scrape it off," she says, indicating the area where gangrene from poor circulation — another effect of the diabetes — had begun. She acknowledges she wasn't always vigilant about tracking her levels and taking the proper medication in her younger years; she says work, a busy social life and motherhood distracted her. (She had one son, Richie, with her first husband, a cranberry products salesman. Richie died in his early 20s from an accidental gunshot wound.) But she says taking ownership of her diabetes, after many years of sidelining it and living a life that included stress and heavy social drinking and smoking, helped her grow up and learn to rely on herself. "I've always been independent," she says. "I've always had courage. But I didn't always own my diabetes."