I knew Larry Miller and I know what he would have wanted if he had lived long enough to celebrate his 65th birthday.

It wasn't another race track, NBA franchise, movie theater, car dealership or psychiatrist who could figure out Carlos Boozer.

It was a body that could properly process insulin.

Insulin is the hormone the body produces to carry glucose to cells. Imagine an usher at, say, a Jazz game taking you to your seat -- a simple but essential part of the process. If you don't get to your seat, you can't watch the game. If nobody gets to their seat, nobody watches the game. Pretty soon they stop playing the games, the franchise goes out of business, the arena goes to ruin.

Sometime within the last decade, Miller's body stopped processing insulin properly.
He had contracted type 2 diabetes -- the insidious disease that has become an epidemic in our lifetime. Over time, insulin not doing its job shut him down. He died in February at 64.



When Miller, who is Mormon, was born at the start of the Baby Boom, nobody ever talked about type 2. Back then they called it adult onset diabetes, as opposed to the much more common juvenile diabetes, or type 1, and relatively few caught it.

But the pace picked up dramatically as Americans exercised less and supersized more. From 1980 through 1990 the incidence of type 2 doubled; from 1990 until 2005 it doubled again. Nobody even wants to hear what's coming in the next report.

Ninety to 95 percent of all diabetes is now type 2. One in five Americans are at risk. Of all people born after 2000 the odds are 1 in 3 they'll contract some form of diabetes, mostly type 2.

Type 2 brings with it all sorts of nasty complications -- heart problems, kidney failure, blindness, sores that won't heal, cellular shutdown that causes amputation.

To make it worse, you can have it for seven to 10 years without even knowing it. The warning signs can be faint enough that you can just ignore them, like a pitcher shaking off signs.

That's what the notorious workaholic and helpaholic (and onetime star pitcher) Larry Miller did. You think building an empire is easy? For him, full-time meant full-time. He never met a day he didn't try to outlast.

Everything else could wait -- exercise, eating right (and sometimes just eating, period), visiting the doctor, healthcare in general.

His biggest problem, according to Gail, his wife, "was that he cared more about everybody else than himself. His time, attention and outlook were focused outward instead of inward."

Which is great, but still.

"You can't take care of everybody else at the expense of yourself," says Gail. "You can help more people if you're healthy. He could have been around 20 more years helping people."

Larry spent his last months battling virtually the entire type 2 rogues lineup: heart problems, kidney failure, amputation, sores that would not heal.

It's not a pleasant picture, and certainly not the sort of exit anyone would choose, but if type 2 took away Miller's physical tools and ultimately his life, it didn't trounce his inexorable drive.

He supported the American Diabetes Association and the fight against type 2 in any and every way he could. He openly confessed about his bad choices. He made videos from his bed.

At his sickest, he never shied from a chance to sound the warning: please, don't do what I did.

Don't neglect your health. Don't get so busy doing things that aren't important that you don't do things that are important.

If it can happen to a bigger-than-life person like Larry Miller, who could have had the doctors visit him, it can happen to anyone.

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month. All across America, the various chapters of the ADA are attempting to loudly sound the warnings about the insidious silent assassin called type 2.

But for me, the most effective shout out is from a friend who is no longer here.

Who says Larry Miller isn't still helping people?

Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday in The Deseret News. Please send E-mail to benson@desnews.com.