Diagnosis Fallout and T-2 guilt

As I mentioned in my last post, I learned about my diagnosis as a T-2 diabeticin a letter I received when I got home from work on a Friday afternoon.  My reaction, to which I lost that first weekend, was guilt -- a deep, abiding shame I'm not 100% over to this day.  

See, my dad is also T-2.  When he was diagnosed, somewhere around twenty years ago, he laid out for me what he'd learned about the disease and that I'd likely have a much better future if I could get in shape.  So, I'd had fifteen or twenty years to get my act together, and I'd failed.  Pretty miserably, too.

As i now know, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle do not cause type two diabetes.  A substantial percentage of newly diagnosed T-2s are in pretty good shape, and I think I read the other day that only 25% of morbidly obese people (those 100 or more pounds overweight) have diabetes.  It's known that there are genetic factors as well.  It's also believed that there are "environmental factors" that are not yet understood. In sum: being overweight did NOT cause my diabetes.

But, even with all that said, it's still true that, had I lost my excess weight, I might have delayed the onset of diabetes, perhaps for a very long time.  And, if I am able to change my lifestyle now, I dramatically increase my chance of avoiding serious complications. 

Maybe.

The devil's not in the details, he's in the maybes.  It's in that forest of maybes that my residual shame resides.

So I spent that first weekend in a pretty negative space.  I felt sorry for myself, sure, but mostly I felt ashamed OF myself.  It was several days before I even managed to tell my sister, with whom I've been closed for many years.

By Monday, though, I'd come to some degree of peace was ready to start looking for resources.  I'm so grateful that there were resources available.