This time last year, I had just brought out my book, Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!, I had an official launch event scheduled for October (National Diabetes Awareness Month), and I was feeling my oats. Everyday, I did something to promote my new book -- handing out flyers, attending and speaking at health fairs, talking to medical professionals, giving away book after autographed book (that I was paying for) -- and I just knew I was going to help all kinds of people suffering with diabetes. After all, there are thirty million of us and an additional five thousand new cases diagnosed every day! How could I go wrong?
As the weeks and then months went by, however, I slowly but surely realized that most folks that share my condition don't want to think about it and certainly won't pay to read about how they could (let alone need to) change how they are dealing with it -- or not. I shook my head sadly, admitting that I should have expected this disappointment, but the fact is that had I done so, I quite possibly wouldn't have written the book at all. It was a lot of work and cost me money to publish and distribute. And while I was proud of my accomplishment, I didn't have much to show for it.
I declare inside the front cover of my book, Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!, that I am not a medical professional. I can't diagnose or treat illness (my own or anybody else's). And furthermore, each body is different, so what works for me may not work for you. Having said that, however, there are some things I've learned about managing diabetes -- and health in general -- that are valuable information. Playing an active role in your health care process is one of them.
I'm no doctor or nurse. In fact, I'm not a trained health professional at all. And I know that each body is different. Some of us are older than others. We represent different genders and body types. Some of us jump out of planes for fun. And some of us can't get out of bed. It's complicated. But I hope that, if I communicate anything at all in these posts, one of the principal messages that comes across is that balance is key to managing diabetes.
When I was diagnosed with our shared condition in February of 2008, all I heard was, "Here's a list of everything you ever loved about food and drink that you can't ever eat or drink again" (a list four feet long) "and here's a list of what you can eat and drink from this point forward" (a list that fit tidily on one page of a 4" x 6" notebook). New information was coming at me so fast, I couldn't possibly catch it all, let alone understand it. So I got some of it confused. And I got some of it wrong. And I missed some of it altogether. Not to mention brushing some of it aside until later -- years later, actually -- because it was complicated and my brains were already stir-fried.
