Facing facts

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 14 September 2006 22:28:39

I have diabetes.

To be precise I have type 2 diabetes.

The diagnosis was made at the end of June but today the thunderbolt hit.

I feel angry.
I am upset.
I hate my body.
I am exhausted.
I want to scream.
I am frightened.
I am hurt.

The realisation came when the dietician was explaining to me how having a healthy diet and being fit could mean I would no longer need Metformin (with all it's side effects such as explosive diarrhoea). Even so, despite all efforts, I would still remain a diabetic.

All I can do is control it before it controls me - before it gets to the next step which is insulin.

But in having to control diabetes I am having to accept that it does control me. It chains me into diets and exercise regimes and makes food the focus of each day.

I'm angry because I have fought all my life to be free to be me and yet even "me" binds me into a disease that allows me the opportunity to control it for a period of time - months, years, who knows? I have been on and off diets since I was 10 when a doctor was concerned about my weight. My mother has always nagged me about having a "tummy", and even now in my late 40s she says "you must do something about..." Even when I got my weight down to under 7st when I was 21 she went on about my shape.

I am upset because I have been secretly hoping that I could get things back to how they were before I was diagnosed. I may well have had diabetes for a number of years, but it's being told you have something that makes the difference. I want it to go away and it won't. It's the same with my asthma - lying dormant until suddenly I'm on a nebuliser in casualty because my inhalers aren't being effective or I've failed to take them because of the hope that whilst it isn't active I am rid of it.

I hate my body because I've been created as "apple" rather than "pear" shaped and my shape is more prone to diabetes. It's to do with waist size or something. It's something in my genes. I have always have a large waist.

I'm exhausted because I'm trying to fight back all the issues, to keep emotions under control and because the sugar in my blood makes me tired.

I want to scream, but who at apart from at myself?

I am frightened because this is taking me out of my comfort zone into a new, and yet another, arena in which I'm fighting. I left the dietician wanting to stuff my face with sweets, and a MacDonalds, and cake. To indulge in comfort eating which I can no longer afford to do.

I am hurt because just when I think I am free from pain; feeling emotionally stable; feeling strong; just when I'm enjoying the discovery of who I am, fate comes and knocks me for six.

I know I am a survivor, I know I am a fighter, I know there is light at the end of any tunnel, I know I have good friends who will listen and help me, and I know whatever I go through in life leave me a stronger person. Above all I have a faith in God, without which I would not have survived some of the things I have been through.

But right now...I want "me" back.

p.s To rub salt into the wound, we were rewarded with doughnuts at work this afternoon for passing the audit. Not ordinary doughnuts - but "Krispy Kreme". I didn't have one.