8 minute read
TEENAGE JUVENILE DELINQUENT
Dunken Francis shares ‘…a story ’bout a murky past, hot an’ hard an’ livin’ fast! Well I used to think life was a gas, ’till I was let down by my pancreas.’
Dunken Francis loves both of his careers but says they are very badly paid. One job is corunning a dojo in Silverdale, Auckland, where he teaches AikiJutsu, and this year will be his 50th year in the art. The other underpaid job is as a musician in a four-piece retro rockabilly band called Boom! Boom! Deluxe, which he jokes is the biggest unknown band in New Zealand.
Born and bred in London, Dunken was a couple of months away from immigrating to Aotearoa New Zealand when he starting feeling ‘pretty grotty’. He’d gone away for a week for an Aikido training camp but within a month of his return had lost six kg and noticed his eyesight starting to blur. He went to his doctor, who told him that she suspected either diabetes or thyroid and to prepare himself for something unpleasant as he’d probably be on medication for the rest of his life.
A finger prick confirmed diabetes when Dunken’s blood sugar read 28. The doctor wondered out loud how he managed to still be conscious.
‘I was so lucky that Hillingdon Hospital, where I lived in west London, the person in charge of the diabetes aspect of the hospital was Dr Rowan Hillson, who is one of the world experts on diabetes, and she was wonderful.’ Dunken expected to have to wait three months to see her but good luck had him in her clinic the very next day, where she was very excited to meet this atypical patient: a 40-year-old super fit black belt with seven percent body fat.
Thinking it was type 2 diabetes, and on Dr Hillson’s advice, Dunken tried a low GI diet, carb restrictions, intermittent fasting, and two different types of tablets, but nothing made any difference. After a month, Dunken was informed he was type 1. ‘In the UK, it’s about one in 800,000 to be a 40-year-old type 1. I thought, lucky me. She told me I should buy a lottery ticket.’
OVERCOMING PHOBIA
This sudden diagnosis landed on Dunken just six weeks before he was about to pack up all his belongings and relocate to the other side of the world. In that short timeframe, he needed to learn as much as he could about his new condition, as well as tackle his longstanding phobia of needles.
‘I had to tell her the story about me in Bulgaria when I was a kid. I got serious bacterial pneumonia, which nearly killed me, so I ended up in a military hospital.’ There, Dunken was faced with glass reusable syringes. ‘For a nine-yearold kid, it was horrendous. I would panic and tense up every time they gave me an injection.’ It would be fair to say that Dunken had a problem with needles, and this would flare up each time he had to have vaccinations before going on holidays. ‘Suddenly realising I was going to have to inject every time I ate something was weird. An emotional rollercoaster, for sure.’ Due to having next to no body fat, Dunken was started on a small 6mm needle. ‘I remember back in London sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, with the syringe in front
of my stomach,’ he explains. ‘Just do it. And it took me 40 minutes to pluck up the courage to do my first jab. In the end, I looked down and it was already in. And the next one took me 20 minutes, and over the course of about two days I gradually got used to it.’
WRITING A SONG ABOUT A SUBJECT THAT NEVER GETS TALKED ABOUT
Last year, Boom! Boom! Deluxe recorded a song about a condition close to readers’ hearts but which no 1950s rock’n’roll song had ever tackled. When writing it, Dunken wasn’t sure how on-the-nose to make it. Should he cover the subject with a metaphor or just be absolutely blatant because, in his view, not many people listen to lyrics anyway.
Veering away from the usual themes of love, teenagers, and cars, Dunken says he wanted to instead concentrate on presenting the challenge of living with diabetes. How it is something that doesn’t make you that much different from everyone else when you still have to still deal with difficult days and difficult people. ‘The whole point of the song was a tongue in cheek, ’50s rock’n’roll, “I ain’t gettin’ no lovin’” kind of thing. But the rest of the song is genuinely based on my experience of type 1,’ he says.
Dunken’s encounters with lows have been channelled both into the music and the accompanying video. He was keen on doing something psychedelic because he believes that people who don’t have diabetes can’t understand how surreal a low blood sugar event is. ‘It’s just like someone spiking your drink. I’ve had aural hallucinations, I’ve had tactile hallucinations, I’ve had displacement where I thought I was somewhere else.’ The song’s video is designed around 1960s psychedelia, and references things that have happened to Dunken, either in his head or in situations he was in.
‘The animal head stuff – I’ve actually caught sight of myself in the mirror when I was low and thought I had a rat head. Just because it was late at night and odd lighting, and I was so out of it, didn’t know what it was. The
Nacho Libre wrestling thing … well, it’s a long story,’ he laughs.
In the few months since the song was released, it has done well, and the video has gone on to be nominated for awards, winning the band devoted audiences in Japan and Indonesia when they toured there last year. Boom! Boom! Deluxe regularly plays Auckland as well as the large retro festivals around Aotearoa. But, while the band is experiencing success in many other countries, Dunken says they are the biggest unknown band in New Zealand. ‘We’ve got some gigs in Australia and America coming up, but, to try and get a gig in somewhere like the Power Station or something like that, it probably wouldn’t be worth us doing it because I doubt we could fill it.’
GIGGING WITH TYPE 1
Being a musician with type 1 diabetes means Dunken has had to teach himself how to adjust routines and put in coping systems in order to deal with the inconsistencies of living with the condition. On the day of a gig, he has to enforce strict rest time on a body and brain that would rather not be kept still. This can be a challenge when being hit by the ‘dawn phenomenon’, a natural rise in blood glucose in the early hours, as it has him ‘jumping out of bed like a lunatic at six and ready to kind of kill people’.
This energy, boosted by ADHD, lasts long enough for him to do his daily business, whether it be band or Aikido, until he burns out around 4pm. So, when he has a gig, Dunken says he’ll make himself relax most of the day in order to save energy and make it through the upcoming night’s high-energy performance.
‘We do a three-hour show,’ he says, ‘and the following day my metabolism is through the roof so I burn off more sugar. But then I might get a day where I’m just doing video editing for our YouTube channel or something, and I’m sitting down and my metabolism is going the other way.’
Dunken says it’s all about coping with the inconsistencies of living with type 1, which he sings about in ‘Sugar’, which you can find on Youtube or the band’s website: Under 4, over 8, I barely make it out the gate
Don’t matter I’m diabetic, don’t get no sugar from you!
boomboomdeluxe.com aikidoauckland.co.nz
SUGAR
Now here’s a story ‘bout a murky past, hot an’ hard an’ livin’ fast!
Well I used to think life was a gas, ‘till I was let down by my pancreas Well it’s Saturday night an’ I just got paid, but I’m doin’ chores aint got no maid Jab myself five times a day, don’t mean I don’t need a roll in the hay.
Under 4, over 8, I barely make it out the gate
Don’t matter I’m diabetic, don’t get no sugar from you!
Aches an’ pains, failing sight, don’t mean I aint still got some fight, Chocolate bourbon (that aint no typo), it’s a damn fine way to kill a hypo!
Now my HbA, is AOK, we can play the night away, Don’t matter I’m diabetic, don’t get no sugar from you!
What don’t kill us surely grows us? Though I take more tablets than ol’ Moses, Highs and lows freeze the brain, or is it just me talkin’ sh*t again?
Now my HbA, is AOK, we can play the night away, Don’t matter I’m diabetic, don’t get no sugar from you!
