Diabetes Class - Oh Boy, What Fun!

The first Diabetes education class I attended was taught by two very young, very peppy, very thin girls who clearly had never experienced a struggle with weight and were unlikely to in the future. Not that I fault them for that - I happen to not be one of those people who believes you must experience something in order to teach it effectively. Of course, experience can help – a lot, sometimes – but I don’t believe it is requisite. Wisdom comes from many places: experience, observation, learning, God; and very often experience does not result in any increase in wisdom. But I digress. Going back to Diabetes Class: I have no memory of these young women’s names, so to keep things simple I will call them Jane and Jill.

Jane and Jill addressed the process of educating us with what I like to call the “cheerleader approach,” a method that tends not to work with me. I don’t know if I am just a natural skeptic, or if it is my enduring dislike of the cheerleader culture, cultivated in childhood by exposure to cruel and arrogant little rich girls in short skirts, but “Rah, Rah, You Can Do It!” does not tend to have an impact on me emotionally. Disclaimer: I know that this approach does work for many people, and I am not suggesting the method be banned, that it is evil, or that people for whom it works are in some way inferior. If anything, I am at a disadvantage because it does not work for me!

I looked around the classroom and noticed that with the exception of myself and one Hispanic woman, everyone in the class had grey or white hair (or none at all). All of us were fat, and a show of hands (requested by J&J) revealed that all of us were Type II, recently diagnosed. I did not realize it at the time, but I was actually quite fortunate to be there – many people are diabetic for years and years before they are diagnosed, and often the diagnosis is done in an emergency room with a blood sugar over 700. One of these days I am going to write a Thank You note to Dr. V for having the foresight to test me at my age (I’ll tell this story another time, it’s interesting). Anyway, I should have been grateful, appreciative, relieved. But at the time I was only ashamed. I figured the other class members were looking at me and thinking “My gosh, that girl is so young! She must really be in bad shape.”