The woman looked distraught as she approached me, and I could detect a tear forming at the edge of each eye. I waited for her to speak.
She slipped a tissue out of her pocket and lightly dabbed her eyes. “I just saw my doctor, and he told me I have diabetes. Type 2.”
I looked at her without showing emotion. She was a nurse, and I didn’t think being told she had diabetes was enough to make her cry. But then she broke down and let the tears flow.
“The bad part,” she said, “the part I don’t understand, is that he said being told I have diabetes is just like being told I’ve had my first heart attack.”
Now I understood why she was so emotional. Being told she had diabetes was bad enough. Learning it was the equivalent of having a heart attack was almost more than she could take.
“I’m not sure where to begin doing something about it,” she said. “I’m a nurse, but I’ve never really studied diabetes. I’ve seen a lot of the results of heart attacks, though.”
She had no idea what relationship diabetes had to the health of her heart, but I knew what she was up against. I also knew she could make lifestyle changes to reduce the medication she would have to take, or even to get her off medication completely.
The complications from diabetes are the seventh leading cause of death in America, yet this book is about hope. Combating diabetes takes much more than medicine, and with lifestyle changes, you can not only treat diabetes; you can prevent it.
Let’s take this journey together.