the silent epidemic

I don’t hold with doctors – haven’t been to see one for about eight years, so I suppose I should be grateful that my contact lens contract with SpecSavers requires me to have a sight test every two years. The glaucoma puffy test threw up a reading that was just over the limit, and the optician has to write to my doctor.

So I went and registered with a doctor, and had a first appointment with the nurse, and the sample says “diabetes”. She was very soothing, said it might be a spike, said to drop of another sample in a week. But I’ve done a lot of research, and I’m in no doubt; I have loads of symptoms, apart from the eye pressure, all of which I put down to just getting older and being overweight; constant tiredness, tingling feet, excessive weeing.

No doubt it’ll take a while to properly diagnose, and no doubt they’ll tell me to try diet and exercise first. Ironically, I’ve started exercising – doing the Couch to 5k running thing, and working out with the Hannah Waterman DVD. I shan’t be hanging about with regard to diet either – I’ve already embarked on a suitably low fat regime.

It’s very frightening; I wobble wildly between thinking “oh I can manage that” and panic and rage. But really, mostly, I’m awfully glad I found out now.