…at the end of last season that she has diabetes, a unique intersection between her professional and personal life. She almost rejected the story line. After she finished her work with Law and Order, many people thought she had cancer. She didn’t, and she was wary of opening herself to speculation about her personal health. Her true-life story helped her decide to merge fact with fiction.
“I’m not talking about it, I’m living it,” she said. “We’re not telling false stories. We’re educating, and I think that’s the best of television when it entertains as well as educates.”
Merkerson advises people who have diabetes or who may be at risk to talk about it and stay educated on the disease because it is always changing. Once she did her research, she discovered the connection between the illness in her family and the lack of proper diabetes management. Now, conversations with her family members have changed.
“Now when I talk to my brother,” she says, “We always say to each other ‘What’s your A1C, not who are you listening to on the radio or what book have you read lately? But what is your A1C? We start there.”