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Source: The Star-Ledger
Each day of Kenwin Cummings’ life, without exception, is punctuated by a series of checkpoints.
When he wakes up in the morning. Before practice. After practice. During halftime of games. Any time he suspects his fatigue or light-headedness might be from more than just throwing his body repeatedly at 220-pound running backs.
He draws a prick of blood at each of these turns, and verifies his blood glucose level.
This has been his routine since he learned he had Type 1 diabetes at age 15 — and was told by a doctor he should not step on a football field again, let alone be a
linebacker for the Jets.
“But he refused to accept that,” said his father, Kenwin Cummings Sr., “as you can well see.”
The 24-year-old, who Saturday made the Jets’ 53-man roster as a backup inside linebacker and special-teams player, is a contradiction to the odds. He’s of Lumbee heritage, one of the few Native Americans in the NFL. He was undrafted out of Wingate University, a tiny Division 2 school in North Carolina, two years ago.
But his most afflicting and active challenge is diabetes, a ceaseless balancing act that has a rare place in professional sports. It requires diligence, and a pump to supply his body with the insulin his pancreas suddenly stopped producing. There are no cheat days, or time off for good behavior — a reality he shares with Bears quarterback Jay Cutler.
“It’s not one of those things where you work nine months and get a couple months off,” Cummings said. “It’s part of your life every single day.”
Or, at least, it has been since the summer before his freshman year of high school.
Cummings developed the tell-tale symptoms: frequent urination, blurred vision and excessive fatigue. When he couldn’t lift himself out of bed one morning, his parents took him to the doctor, where tests confirmed the diagnosis.
No one else in his family, which is concentrated within just a handful of miles in Pembroke, N.C., has the disease. Sometimes it develops when a virus damages the pancreas, but specialists could never pinpoint what occurred in Cummings’ body.
But as he and his parents figured out a new life routine, and drove to Duke every other month for counseling they only found discouraging, Cummings knew one thing for certain: He was not going to give up football. Or stop wrestling and running track, and hunting and fishing in his free time.
“They can throw a stick in my spokes, but I just kept going,” Cummings said. “It was almost like I was challenging it: ‘I’m going to do this; I’m not going to let diabetes rule over me.’ ”
His parents, who never missed a football game from fifth grade through his senior year at Wingate, traveled to stadiums in the Southern heat with his insulin packed in a cooler. At the Jets facility, Cummings totes around a small black bag he and his teammates jokingly call his purse, with the prescribed hormone, test strips and vital supplies packed inside.
It’s a constant obligation for Cummings to keep his blood sugar between 80 and 150, measured in milligrams per deciliter. The pump hooks up through his hip, giving him spikes of insulin after meals, to bring blood sugar down, and a continuous flow through the rest of the day, to keep levels steady.
He relies on this device, which one night last offseason malfunctioned while he was sleeping and gave him too much insulin. A friend was meeting him for church the next morning, and when she didn’t hear from him, found him weakened and passed out from low blood sugar. The remedy, as all his close friends must know, is eating simple sugars.
Football is a challenge not just for its exertion level but because he can’t wear the pump during games. Cummings checks his blood sugar before, at halftime and after — and sometimes on the sideline, too. Low blood sugar is hard to discern from the exhaustion of playing. High levels cause confusion and mood swings, which there is no place for on an NFL field.
It’s an added responsibility, but one he won’t even mention if not directly asked.
“He makes it a non-issue,” linebacker Bart Scott said. “The same thing with Jerome Bettis and the asthma. I think it inspires people that deal with the same situation to know that it’s manageable, and it shouldn’t limit you. It’s an adjustment, but you can do it.”
The root of Cummings’ determination may be his upbringing on a 100-acre beef cattle farm that has been in his family for 44 years. The only son, he returns in the offseason, waking up at 5 a.m. to put down fence posts or hand-feed cows ready for slaughter.
He wasn’t always the most gifted athlete — he was cut from his sixth-grade football team — but built strength in high school by flipping 700-pound tires from logging machinery. Now, his Jets coaches say he’s one of the hardest workers in the weight room and a powerful hitter.
His first two seasons were spent mainly on the Jets practice squad, converting from defensive end to linebacker in his first year, and learning Rex Ryan’s new defense in the second. He began playing faster this spring, and once he fixed his stance and footwork in training camp, led the team in tackles through the first three preseason games.
To Cummings, the details of diabetes — knowing that a slice of bread has about 15 grams of carbohydrates, shunning soda, those daily blood sugar checkpoints — aren’t sacrifices. They’re part of life, a life that also includes playing the sport he loves for a living.
“Those are little things,” Cummings said, “if you look at the broad, big picture. ”
Jenny Vrentas:
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