A changed man
'Everything counts now'
By Kevin W. Smith
KSMITH@AZSTARNET.COM
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.15.2007
When your mind turns on you, it typically doesn't involve vomiting for an entire day.
This is how Nick Luca knew he wasn't going crazy.
The local musician and recording-studio engineer had been acting odd and irritable in the weeks preceding the climax in August. Turns out he was dealing with undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes that had descended into ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition that can prompt a coma.
"You definitely go through some epiphanies," Luca said of the experience.
When Luca, 37, began spilling his stomach one day in late August at his home in Barrio Viejo, his wife took him to the emergency room at University Medical Center.
Admitted for five days, Luca narrowly avoided a coma, but he gathered a financial burden that is not about to lighten. He has health insurance through his wife, Sandra Luca, but having to spend multiple days in the hospital is not cheap, and neither is a lifetime of insulin bills to follow.
To alleviate some of the heft, there is a benefit concert being held for Luca Friday at Club Congress that will feature several hometown guests, including Cathy Rivers and members of Calexico, Giant Sand and Sand Rubies.
Luca came to Tucson in 1993 from the East Coast to attend the UA and collect his master's degree in music. He's since become one of the more established names in town, both with his own music and as an engineer at Wavelab Studio, where he recently engineered Neko Case's vocals on the latest New Pornographers album, "Challengers."
It was on tour for his latest album, "Fractions," a collection of mostly upbeat pop-rock numbers, when signs of his new life-long struggle began drifting in.
He began losing weight and getting grouchy, which he initially thought was just tour fatigue. As things progressed, the normally easygoing Luca began to think he might be sliding into insanity and was writing songs that went off on long social tirades about class and race.
When he returned home, he started developing more physical symptoms, like a constant thirst and epic lethargy.
He tried to sleep it off, but once Aug. 20 hit, he was admitted to the UMC emergency room and told he had diabetes.
"It was pretty shocking," he said, sitting in the office of his home in a blue UA hat and munching on a bowl of cereal.
No one else in Luca's family has the disease, so it's not anything he felt was even a possibility.
Since then, he's been trying to get used to taking four shots of insulin a day, watching what and when he eats, trying to avoid stress, and constantly monitoring his glucose levels. "You become your own doctor," he said.
Luckily, he has also been documenting the whole experience through songwriting, from his "crazy" songs when he thought was losing his mind, to down-beat and lonely, to turning-the-corner, life-affirming numbers.
Thankfully, there's a much better chance at hearing those creations today than ever before.
"Everything counts now," he said.
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