Diabetes For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 1

Dealing with Diabetes

In This Chapter

Discovering successful people with diabetes

Coping with the initial diagnosis

Upholding your quality of life

If you have diabetes, in the course of a year you live with that diagnosis for about 8,760 hours. During that time, you spend perhaps one hour with a physician. In Chapter 12, I introduce you to many of the other people who may help you to manage your disease. Clearly, however, the ball is in your hands alone practically all the time. How you deal with your diabetes determines whether you score or are shut out.

One of my patients told me about working at her first job out of college, where each employee birthday was celebrated with cake. She came to the first celebration and was urged to eat a slice. She refused and refused, until finally she had to say, “I can’t eat the cake because I am diabetic.” The woman urging her said, “Thank God. I thought you just had incredible willpower.” Twenty years later, my patient clearly remembers being told that having diabetes is better than having willpower. Another patient told me the ...