I Have Diabetes

 

“The Doctor told me I have diabetes”, those words crushed my heart, I cried. It was the day before Thanksgiving and I was at work; tears flowed silently down my face as I tried to remain strong, but the truth is I was scared.

A lot of people don’t realize that diabetes is a serious condition that affects a lot more than your blood sugar levels. Type 2 diabetes is a lifelong condition that can have serious, negative effects on literally your entire body. The problems caused by diabetes can range from heart disease to kidney failure to losing toes and fingers to nerve damage. So when my mom shared this news with me it was as if my kids or I had been diagnosed with this disease.

I cannot begin to explain the love I have for my mother, there are no words to describe how I feel about my mom, none. I am sure a lot of you know exactly what I mean. My mom shares the same addiction to sugar that I have so it’s not a surprise that she has been diagnosed with diabetes type II, but it doesn’t make it feel any better.

I remember seeing my mom about a week or so before her diagnosis and telling her she had lost weight, my mom has always had little legs but they looked really tiny and it hadn’t been that long since I had seen her. My mom works out 3 mornings a week and has been making some improvements on her snacking habits so she figured that maybe it was related to that but she also joked “I sure hope I’m not sick”. She had noticed that she had been extremely thirsty lately and that her legs were cramping really badly and her vision was off, so she told her doctor and the doctor ran some tests, low and behold what was once a joke was now a reality. My mom had lost about 20 lbs. in two weeks.

My grandmother was diagnosed with diabetes a few years before she passed away and she was a thin woman who ate fairly well, so size had nothing to do with either of their diagnosis. But my grandma had always been a strong-willed woman so when she was given her diagnosis she immediately changed her eating habits and was not insulin dependent. My mom on the other hand is insulin dependent at this time and it is my hope that she makes some serous changes to her diet so she too can reverse this diagnosis and not need to depend on insulin. On Thanksgiving Day I had to give her, her first at-home insulin shot. My nerves were a wreck, but I had to be strong for my mom who was having a hard time facing the reality of what was going on.

This scares me, not just because this is my mom but this is also me, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not until a few years from now, but one day this is me. Especially if I don’t get control over my addiction to sugar. I’ve mentioned before that I had gestational diabetes which increases your chances to develop type II diabetes in the future, but that mixed with the hereditary factor, I am almost guaranteed to develop diabetes. I was non-insulin dependent because like my grandmother, I changed my diet and followed my meal options provided by my nutritionist to the letter. I did research on diabetes and everything else I needed to know to protect my baby and myself.

So now I have to dig deep inside of me and find that person that wanted nothing more than to have a healthy baby and not have to inject herself with insulin. I have to find that person and beat this addiction. I have to fight for my life, because, yes it is that serious.

And…It Is What It Is!