It took decades for McCauley to decide to tell her story. The play she began writing came to be titled Sugar, a one-woman show that ran in early 2012 at Emerson College in Boston, where she teaches. McCauley wove information about the history of diabetes and its prevalence in the country with stories about her diagnosis and life with diabetes. It’s the emotional stuff doctors skip, and she says it’s just as important as cold, hard facts. “Both are necessary. There should be more telling stories than there is,” she adds. “They’re helpful in a different way.”

Telling total strangers about her diabetes was cathartic for McCauley, and while Sugar doesn’t wrap up nice and tidy with a message, McCauley does engage the audience to make her point. “Many people from the audience said, ‘I’m so glad you’re doing this show because I didn’t know how to talk about it.’ And then other people say, ‘I wasn’t listening to my friend or family member [with diabetes].’ ”