Hey All,
So my hubby has just found out his mother has been diagnosed with diabetes (since december but only mentioned recently). This comes only a few years after having her gall bladder removed due to gall stones. The diabetes isn't really a surprise to us as we expected it; hubby's mothers father was diagnosed and passed away with complications, and certain members of the family do not eat balanced and are overweight.
My immediate family is fine, however I have grown up with seeing relatives pass away from complications; my fathers parents both had type 1, and my mothers father developed type 2 after recovering from pancreatic and prostate cancer. We all eat healthy and balanced, lots of exercise and keeping an eye on our processed sugar / fat intake.
We've tried to educate hubbys mother on this since her father was diagnosed, but she hasn't changed anything and seemed to pass her gall bladder off as "I can eat anything, the doctors don't understand", so I'm guessing she would have had regular blood tests for the gall bladder, overweight and high blood pressure, so surely the doctors would have picked up on the pre diabetes and diabetes, therefore she shouldn't treat it as a shock and should have been doing something about it considering she's seen how her father passed. But it doesn't seem to have changed her at all, she still eats the same foods, and goes out for meals, with little exercise. We haven't discussed it in detail yet to know what she does to manage it ie tablets / injection / regular blood sugar monitoring, but I would suspect a doctor would go through all that. So why is she not doing anything?
How do we talk to her to get her to understand that we don't want to see her pass that way. That she can cope with it if she changes her mindset, it's kind of like denial and saying the doctors don't know stuff. Really worried, that she'll just keep doing the same old things and have all the complications.
They're from a family where - something wrong; just take a tablet for it, still wrong; just take more and manage tablets yourself. That isn't the right mindset.
How do we be honest, say we're worried, suggest changes without sounding pushy? because we're still "children" even though we're 35!! We've learned so much over the years so it'd be a great time to share those skills and mindset.