By the time Xavier was 18, he had already imagined a possible future: playing football. "I was a linebacker, 230 pounds, trying to get recruited," he recalls. "Then I dropped to 175 in a month and a half. I thought I was just tired. My mom thought otherwise."
His mom was right. The morning Xavier asked for help getting to school, she instead drove him straight to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with autoimmune type 1 diabetes (T1D). This was a life-altering moment that ended one dream, but also opened a completely new path; a dream Xavier didn’t even know he had.
Within months, he'd traded the football field for the stage, traveling to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland with his high school theater troupe. "It was kind of a blessing in a weird way," he says. "It made me more open to change. I ended up not pursuing football, but I had this great summer in Edinburgh, surrounded by theater nerds, and I thought: I want to do this."
Today, he is a filmmaker, writer, performer, and advocate—mentored by Pixar creatives, working on a book, and recently nominated for an Image Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His dream now? “To create and produce a piece that has meaningful diabetes representation on screen: people who look like me, living with this, in a significant way. I’m going to write it and make it happen.”
From Invisible Illness to Visible Voice
When Xavier was diagnosed in 2009, he didn’t know anyone else with aT1D. “I had to Google it—musician Bret Michaels, for instance —just to see people living with it,” he says. That changed when a younger football player with the same condition approached him at school. “He told me, ‘If you need to inject, take your blood sugar at the table—literally who cares? Don’t feel bad about it.’ That empowered me.”
That unapologetic honesty became his trademark. Weeks later, that same visibility saved a life. At a party, someone remembered Xavier had diabetes and found him when another student was in diabetic ketoacidosis, a potentially life-threatening complication of diabetes that occurs when the body does not have enough insulin. "It was scary," he says. "But it showed me why speaking up matters."
“Science helped me chase my dreams. Now I want to help someone else chase theirs—by showing them they’re not alone.”
Xavier
The Mental Math of Survival
Autoimmune type 1 diabetes is a relentless numbers game—carb ratios, blood sugar levels, insulin doses—layered over the everyday calculations of life. "Burnout is real," Xavier admits. "You do internal calculations every single day, for years. You get tired of it. But you can't stop, or you won't be here."
That’s why he’s excited about advances in diabetes technology. “Taking away some of that mental math would be a game-changer,” he says. “Especially now that I’m a dad. I can’t be willy-nilly about my health. I have to live longer—for my daughter.”
Fatherhood as Fuel
Xavier's three-year-old daughter already knows her dad's "purse" holds snacks for his diabetes. She counts along when he injects insulin. "She has to see me chase my dreams, even if I'm terrified inside," he says. "Kids are sponges. If she sees me go for it, she'll go for it too."
That chase—creative, personal, and deeply tied to his health—is what connects Xavier's story to Sanofi's mission of chasing the miracles of science. For Xavier, science is not abstract; it's the reason he's alive to tell his story, raise his daughter, and push for representation that he struggled to find when he was diagnosed.
“Science helped me chase my dreams,” he says. “Now I want to help someone else chase theirs—by showing them they’re not alone.”
Every person's experience is unique and individual experiences may vary. Remember, your healthcare provider is the best source of health-related information and be sure to ask them any questions you may have. Individuals featured were compensated.
