Your Diabetes and Your Family

Does your family take an active role when it comes to your diabetes? Does your spouse, partner, child, sibling, or friends who are indeed family, go with you to doctor’s appointments and help you map out your diabetes management? Do they remind you to check your blood sugar or take your medicine and if so, is it a help or a hindrance?

Family meals and type 2 diabetes

Have family meals changed and if the answer is yes, how's that going? For instance, growing up in my house (3 out of 6 children with type 1 diabetes, plus my dad) I don’t ever remember a “this food is for the people with diabetes, this food is for those without people diabetes” approach. We all ate the same meal because my mother “wasn’t running a restaurant!” Everyone ate a salad with dinner and no matter what. Baked potatoes were always uniformly on the small side - nobody ever had a ginormous one! A side of veggies was a must (think broccoli or string-beans and sometimes both) and the majority of our proteins (chicken, steak or fish) were baked or lightly sautéed, never fried. Small fruits and lots of berries (which were always measured out) and ginormous RubyRed grapefruits, acted as both dessert and snacks - along with sugar-free pudding or jello.

Everyone, diabetes or not, drank either water, diet soda or skim milk with our meals - and occasional alcoholic beverage for those over the age of 21.

Diabetes involves the whole family

I’m asking because like it or not a diabetes diagnosis impacts and involves the whole family - sometimes family members are great and other times not at all.

Has your family adapted to your diabetes and the changes it brings - have they embraced it or do they make it more difficult?

On the flip-side, are you receptive to help and having a partner (so when it comes to your diabetes, or are you the opposite?)