My wife's a diabetic. And she's the spitting image of her mother who died at a mere 53 years old from the side-effects of diabetes; heart and kidney damage. I guess I don't really know that the heart damage (blocked arteries) was actually cause by the diabetes. Maybe she had too much cholesterol buildup independent of that.
But my wife is now 50 years old and she's clearly doing better than her mother at that age. She's actually still pretty spry. And her feet are only a little uglier than mine. And the rest of her is far better looking than the rest of me.
But she has a long history, and I know it'll never change, of being really half-assed about dealing with her diabetes. She will not take her prescriptions at the right times. She'll pretend to be unsure. But I know the answer; of course she didn't take them when she should have. She almost never does. She'll make doctor appointments. And she'll always know the date, but she'll never know the time. Many is the time when I argued her out of bed and had her call the office, only to find out that the time was a half hour earlier.
She'll go through fairly long periods of eating just as poorly as I do. She'll also go through fairly long periods of trying, somewhat, to eat the way a diabetic ought to. But even then she'll binge on a half a sack of Oreos or a couple of candy bars.
She also doesn't allow me to see it. It's not that she tries to keep it a secret from me. She often confesses on her own. And she leaves the evidence in plain sight. I've seen the empty Reese's sacks plus innumerable little bits of rolled up gold foil on her passenger seat way more than once. But she doesn't do it in front of me. And it's weird because she could and she knows it. She needn't fear my anger because I don't get angry about it. That's her body and her health to spend as she sees fit and I've made that clear. We've had a few cross words about her making appointments that she doesn't keep. But that's more a matter of me telling her to at least be polite to other people. And even then I don't get furiously angry over the matter.
My real dilemma is that I don't think her attempts to follow 'doctor's orders' are doing her much good and I really do hate the idea of her munching on a bit of celery but wishing she could have a pizza. And I'd rather she just ate the pizza, Big Macs, shakes, etc and enjoyed herself. I think the end result is going to be about the same either way.
From time to time I tell her so. But then I have to walk it back a bit. Saying, "But I'm not sure I should be saying this since it's obviously bad advice". But she'll decline, saying, "No. I'm gonna be careful of what I eat and try to take my meds right". But then she doesn't take her meds right and she has flings with Reese's, Oreos, Hershey's, McDonald's and so on.
Diabetics are weird people.
Present company excepted, of course.
