My Sister and Diabetes

My sister, I'll call her Susan, has just been diagnosed with diabetes, Type 2. Apparently she had been diabetic for quite a while, because she is bleeding behind the retinas in her eyes. The retinologist said that she had classic signs of retinopathy, damaged caused by diabetes.
This diagnosis is not surprising because diabetes runs in our family. What is stunning is that she maintains that she has had not symptoms.

My thoughts about this diagnosis and lack of symptoms for Susan come in the form of a lesson for all of us. You see, I believe the symptoms were there and had been there for a long time. For the last several years, Susan has been totally focused on caring for Daddy and Mother, and other personal things in her life. Because of her ‘tunnel vision’, she either was completely unaware of the symptoms or pushed them aside because they seemed unimportant compared to the other concerns with which she was dealing.

The lesson? It is those quiet nagging things in our lives which are so easy to ignore that will one day become an all consuming crisis for ourselves and those who love us. We need to pay attention to what is going on with our bodies and deal with our own health issues in a timely manner, even while life seems to be swirling around us in a chaotic fashion. Easier said than done.