By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

He can crack jokes about it now, but for 10 years, Colin Kumabe was slowly killing himself. Doctors told him he'd lose his eyesight, that his legs would have to be cut off, that his kidneys would fail. But for years, he lived in deep denial.

"You feel normal and think that everything is OK, but slowly, you're falling apart," he says.

It started in 1991 when Kumabe took a simple "wellness exam." His blood sugar was so high, he was immediately put on injectable insulin. He was 36 years old, about to be married, and severely diabetic.

"All of a sudden, you're taking all these tests because they have to stabilize your blood sugar, so there's all these needles, they have to keep drawing blood. So you're thinking, oh, my God, my life has ended," he said. He remembers going to eat at Stuart Anderson's afterward and thinking, "This is the last prime rib I'll ever eat!"

He went to class and learned about diabetes, but it soon became what he calls a "mental game."

"For me, I tried to beat the numbers. I would try to starve myself before class so I could get a good blood sugar number, but in reality, right after I'd leave class, I'd be drinking sodas and whatever. And what I was doing was not uncommon."

He played mental games with his doctors, too, figuring out a way to get his prescription filled two or three times.

"I'd amass this amount of pills, so at a certain point, I wouldn't go to the doctors. I'd cancel my appointments and figure I'm OK, I'm taking pills."

Kumabe was far from OK. His weight crept up to 262 pounds at the highest point (he is 5 feet 10). He had two eye surgeries to try to stem the damage the diabetes was doing to his vision. His blood pressure was "through the roof." And he was losing feeling in his limbs. "I didn't realize my legs were numb from the knee down," he says. "I just thought maybe my shoes were too tight."

At one point, Kumabe decided to try walking for exercise. He bought brand-new white athletic shoes and took off down the road with his Walkman blasting. His wife met him for coffee after the walk. She noticed that one of his brand-new white shoes was covered with blood. Inside, his white sock was soaked red and the blood had filled up the entire shoe. He hadn't even noticed.

At the emergency room, the medical staff was wincing at what they saw. (Let's just say he had multiple injuries from walking and leave it at that because the exact description isn't fit for breakfast table reading). Kumabe told them, "Do what you gotta do. I don't feel a thing."

"That's the blessing and the curse," he says. "The blessing is that you can't feel the pain. The curse is that you can't feel the pain so you don't know about the damage."

The turning point for him finally came when his doctor just laid it all out, saying: "Colin, I'm really concerned. Pretty soon, we're getting into permanent damage."

"I guess at that point, I saw it wasn't a game anymore," he says.

Kumabe joined Weight Watchers with his wife, despite his worry of, "Oh, no. It's a WOMAN'S thing! Ladies sitting around talking about how much they love chocolate!" He found the program to be very helpful and adapted it to a diabetic diet. Since June, he has lost 60 pounds and is on track to hit his ideal weight this summer. The amount of medication he needs has been dramatically decreased and his health is returning.

Since Kumabe hates formal exercise, he came up with his own program. He blasts Lynyrd Skynyrd or the soundtrack from "Flashdance" and jumps around his living room for half an hour until he's winded and breaks a sweat. "There's nobody watching. I just go crazy, do what I want to do, punching the air, dancing around, playing air guitar."

When he's not rockin' the house, Kumabe is a career Zippy's man who manages the Nimitz restaurant. You might think that would be a liability, but it has turned out to be an asset. Zippy's carries the Dr. Terry Shintani diet food, and Zippy's CEO Jason Higa has instituted a health incentive program for his staff.

"For the first 10 pounds, for every pound you lose, you get $10," Kumabe explains. "For every pound after the first 10, you get $20." There are also team incentives, maintenance and personal health goals with financial incentives.

"I used to stand in front of the Zippy's poster for diabetes and look at it and go, nah, that's not me," Kumabe remembers. But now, he hopes others recognize themselves in his story so that they can come to grips with their own diabetes.

"Hawai'i has the worst rate of diabetes of any state in the country," he said. "There are 80,000 to 100,000 people here with diabetes, and half of them don't know it."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.