I was a six year old girl, who even at that tender age....was way too fashion forward for my very traditional southern upbringing. My Aunt Judy used to say she could see me wearing a bed sheet, draped just so.... I was totally into not wearing what everyone else did....well, until "junior high"...but that's a blog for another day....
My mother bought me this little peachy chiffon number and I probably wore that dress 800 times. It became my all-occasion attire...and I loved it. Once, I got myself all dolled up to go to the *Time Saver* convenience store with mama to get the dreaded items we'd forgotten at the grocery store. Like I said, it was a special occasion dress and wearing it made me feel special. I ran into the store after my brother and caught the lace trim on a shelf and ripped that dress. Oh, the tears.
That isn't the only really impressionable memory of that dress for me.....this dress, I wore to my grandmother's funeral. There are the weird photos that my family took of all of the grandchildren around her casket. Yes, my family does that....I don't have a good reason why. Memories are memories...and that is how they preserved that one. I won't share *that* photo.
My grandmother died from of complications resulting of living with Type 2 Diabetes. At the age of 6, I knew diabetes killed people. It scared me then....and scares me now. Diabetes robbed my mother and her siblings of their mother. It robbed me and my brother, and the subsequent additions to our family of a grandmother. I knew about this disease my whole life. Never did I imagine how much I wish I could have started my efforts in advocating for the rights of people who live with or care for someone with this disease THEN. I was a somewhat bright child who was far from shy or demure. I could have been fighting the fight all along. Hindsight, no?
Fast forward a bit....I have worked most of my adult life in some form of healthcare....womb to tomb. I have embalmed bodies at a funeral home, and I have managed an endocrinology office.....irony..... in that I saw the before and after affects of what a person who lives with disease really REALLY lives with....the good, the bad, and the ugly. I saw families blame their loved ones for dying or being fat or being not proactive enough in dealing with this disease. I saw aging parents literally give up taking care of themselves because while no one could see the disease....the stigma of having *diabetes* was like wearing white shoes after labor day....white shoes with a giant black scuff.
I will say this....until the day diabetes got personal in my life...and it did...in the worst way imaginable....I was not indifferent about this disease....I was aware. I was unsure about what it actually meant to live with but I knew that it was always popping up in my life....one little glimpse at a time. I saw physicians I worked with get very large bonuses from insurance companies if they could get a portion of their diabetes client panels to a *target* A1c. I watched nurses call those pesky non compliant diabetic patients and literally bribe them to just eat better for this month...or exercise....or fill in the blank. I was incredulous. I remember telling the nurse practitioner I worked with that those clinicians and nurses needed to go to Diabetes Rehab. Quit blaming, bribing or coercing these people and try understanding how they live and encourage them to care. Fell on deaf ears. They worked with the ones that would and the rest....well, they didn't. It was their disease....and they had to manage it. WHA??
About the dress....That dress made me feel special. People who love, live with, care for or advocate for someone with diabetes.....they are my dress now....and my perfect white shoes with the black scuff that I will wear after labor day...This family of strangers I lean on daily for compassion may lead very diverse lives... but at the end of it all, we are NOT okay with the stigmas....or the thought that someone has no fight in them because it's *just* diabetes. That's enough for me.
Diabetes entered my family before I was born.....put it's self in my life in many manifestations....and then it preyed on my child. My D kiddo is six now, and he knows more about diabetes than ANY professional I ever worked for. And he rocks. Plain out rocks the world daily. No way in hell will I allow anyone who can be within earshot of me to not only hear about diabetes....but about how fabulous and special a community we are. Scuffed blue heels are still able to tell the story....the real one.
