Best news first: I am on the behavioral side of the study. Yaaaaaay! It feels good to get excited about my health. I've missed that feeling.
I came home with a binder full of information on the Glycemic Load, Exercise, Blood Glucose (GLEBG) program/Diabetes management and got right to work. One of the first things I learned is that I know next to nothing about Type II Diabetes. I'll start with what I did know:
My grandmother and her sister had Type II Diabetes. My mom had it. It runs in my family.
You can't eat a lot of sugar if you have Diabetes.
You can take medicine but if your Diabetes gets worse, you have to be able to give yourself shots.
The disease is with you for life.
People can lose their legs, feet or toes.
People can get Neuropathy or nerve damage.
It is really hard to manage Diabetes.
A lot of people have it.
Fat people get it.
What I didn't know:
When blood sugar leaks into your body, it corrodes your arteries and nerves.
"Complications of Diabetes" are heart attacks and strokes and other known events that happen to cause death in the body.
Anyone can get it. It's not necessarily a "getting-fat-comes-first" disease.
With practice and diligence, it's not really hard to manage Diabetes.
Diabetes doesn't get worse all by itself. Lifestyle and habits help it along.
Stress and trauma elevate blood sugar and can launch you into hyperglycemia.
You can use the glycemic index to help you navigate through which foods are safer for Diabetics to eat.
I'll know more as we go. The biggest revelation for me was that even though people I love have lost limbs and my mom told stories of her neuropathy....I didn't truly understand how critical Diabetes management is. The routine of taking blood sugar and watching my loved ones eat sugar-free candies was just another part of a normal environment for me. But so was a diet of heavy foods and minimal exercise. And so was complaining. When all of that becomes regular to you, just part of daily life, you really don't know there is a freer way to live. This is what is normal. You accept it. The scary thing is, nothing that ought to be alarming stands out when everything feels like mundane business as usual.
This week I'm learning to take blood glucose readings a few times a day and am monitoring how I feel before and after meals. It's a first step in the first week of being in this study. I have a feeling I will learn more than I ever wanted to know about Type II Diabetes. Lucky you get to come along with me.
