Earlier this week I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, hence today’s macro photo of a blood droplet from a fingerstick, such as is used for testing blood glucose.
Sony A7iii w/Sony 90mm f2.8 Macro G
ISO200, 1/200, f13
Processed in Capture One 20 Pro & Photoshop
As you might imagine, I’m less than thrilled with this development, but given my family history, I am also not completely shocked. My A1C numbers have been climbing steadily over the last few years, and I fully recognize that I haven’t been as diligent with diet or exercise this past year. 2019 was rife with depressing and stressful events both personal, such as my mother’s death, my husband’s brush with unemployment, as well as national/global… *gestures at everything*.
My father is a well-managed diabetic. His father was a poorly managed one, and plenty of other people I’m related to have lived with or died of the condition. I was warned several years ago that despite my generally healthy diet and not ideal, but certainly not sedentary lifestyle, my genetic predisposition put me at a higher risk than someone who ate and exerted themselves identically to me, but got a better roll of the genetic dice.
My list of medical conditions is already rather considerable and I’m less than thrilled to add to it. But there’s a feeling I rarely associate with my medical status as well: shame.
I’m intimately cognizant of the fact that not only could this development have been delayed or prevented, I was on a good course for doing so only a few years earlier, before I allowed myself to be derailed by other elements in my life. There’s little in my complex health situation that can be attributed to lifestyle choices, and I was unaware of how deeply I’d internalized some of the toxic messaging in our culture around diabetes in particular.
With all the other daily struggles of being a visibly disabled person in our society, as well as dealing with chronic pain, and depression, I would not have expected this utterly predictable development to have thrown me off balance anywhere near as much as it has.
It’s clear that shifting to a healthier lifestyle is going to involve more than just maintaining healthy blood sugar and getting more exercise. I’ve got some self-reflection and internal work to do, too.
As a former student of mine was fond of saying “Oh great, another fucking oportunity for a life lesson.”