November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂
**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.
“A little bit about me. I was diagnosed sometime in the late 70’s with type 2 diabetes. Treatment never really worked for me. I was sick all the time. My temper was short and I alienated a lot of people because of it. I worked hard, was always tired, and never could get any help with anything; for diabetes or anything else. I was a miserable person and a miserable person to be around. Then, sometime in the 80’s I was in the clinic for something else. My Blood Sugar was off the chart. I was immediately seen by and endocrinologist and placed on insulin. Almost immediately, I felt better. I began to study diabetes, take it seriously and learned to take the medications that I should at the proper time. Later, I learned that I am really an LADA diabetic, not a type 2. There is a lot more to the story, but there is no time for it.
What I learned through all of this was that acceptance is the key to health. Too often, we talk about what diabetes does to us. What we do not stress enough is what diabetes can do FOR us. It has taught me to be more disciplined, calm, understanding, cooperative, not to take life so seriously, and has made me a more spiritual person. The words of Charles Swindoll speaks volumes to me when he speaks about attitude. I would like to share them:
‘The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.’
– Charles Swindoll
This is rather long, but I hope that it speaks to someone else as it has spoken to me. I am grateful to you for asking those in your community for a contribution, and honoured to have provided this little bit about me, and how I think about diabetes, to you. I hope there is a blessing somewhere in it.”
Brian Wittman
Dx Date: I am always amazed that people know the date and hour. I do remember the glucose tolerance test. I believe mine was March of 1975, although I was warned about diabetes earlier in college. The LADA thing came in about 1987 or 88; I am not sure. I never took care of myself at first. I began insulin in earnest, counting carbs, watching diet, study and all that goes with it in 2000.
In Peace & Light,
Cynthia
