‘Did he give youanything?’
‘Advice.’ Nora spat out the word. ‘Lose weight, was the main one. Oh, and he gave me a couple of leaflets.’ She fished them out of her bag and glanced at them helplessly. ‘He said he’s going to give me a chance to bring down my HABC, or whatever the hell it’s called, and test me again in three months.’
‘But can’t they give you anything for it?’
‘Theycan, but he doesn’t want to. He said that putting a patient on medication doesn’t address the root cause.’
‘Which is?’ Trinny was looking as concerned as Nora felt.
‘Diabetes is sometimes genetic and there are other reasons, but in my case he thinks it’s mostly due to bad diet, not enough exercise, and too much visceral fat.’ Nora grasped the rolls of flesh bulging over the waistband of her work trousers and jiggled them.
Trinette gasped. ‘That’s fat shaming! You ought to report him. What has he got against curvy women, that’s what I’d like to know!’ Trinny wasn’t a skinny waif, either.
Nora wished it was simply a dislike of cuddlier ladies that had driven the doctor to tell her to lose weight, but she feared it wasn’t. From the snippets she’d gleaned from the internet, she had a feeling he might be right.
‘What about your menopause symptoms, the waking in the night, the tiredness? What’s he going to do aboutthat?’ Trinny demanded.
‘Um, he says it’s the diabetes that’s making me feel this way.’ Apparently, being constantly thirsty, weeing a lot (especially at night), and feeling knackered all the time were classic symptoms.
‘What are you going to do?’
Nora let out a resigned sigh. ‘I supposed I’d better try to lose some weight.’
To be honest, she didn’t know where to start. She’d never dieted in her life, and she’d never wanted to. She was happy with her body and had never desired to be slim. She also liked food too much to restrict what she ate. And by food, she didn’t mean stuff like salads, either. The food she liked was heartyand substantial. Food such as pies and stews, casseroles and hot pots, pasta, pizza, chips, cakes…Realfood. not rabbit food.
‘You could try going to the slimming club in the community centre?’ Trinette suggested, but Nora shuddered.
The thought of a public weigh-in was just as abhorrent to her as a public hanging. Anyway, she’d already been weighed at the surgery, and she hadn’t enjoyed the experience in the slightest.
Three stone overweight.
Who knew?
Obviously not her. She’d suspected she was a little on the heavy side, but notthree stone. And according to the GP, a three stone loss would only just put her at the top end of the ideal weight range for her five feet five-inch height. If she wanted to be in the middle, she needed to lose four stone in total.Four!
That wasn’t going to happen, was it?
‘Aw, hun, I’m sure it’s not as bad as he made out,’ Trinny said, offering her another biscuit, which Nora took. ‘I mean, lots of people have diabetes and they’re okay.’
Unfortunately, Nora suspected itwasas bad and that she might never be okay again.
‘Are you alright?’ Andrea asked Nora the following morning when she popped into the bakery for her usual cakey breakfast. ‘You look a bit tired.’
Abittired? Nora suspected Andrea was being polite. When she’d got ready for work this morning, her mirror had practically recoiled at the sight of her pale, drawn face and dark-circled eyes. And she laid her lack of sleep last night firmly at diabetes’s door; she hadn’t slept a wink because she’d been reading anything and everything on the subject that she could get her hands on. Starting with the leaflets the doctor had given her, then swiftly moving on to the internet, she’d devoured every morsel of information, swallowing some of it and spitting out other bits until her brain was so full she thought her head might explode. It was bursting at the seams with facts and figures, dos and don’ts, but the general consensus of all the websites and forums was that carbs and sugar were out and healthy eating and exercise were in.
It made her want to weep. In fact, she did have another cry, along with a hefty portion of ‘why me?’ and a side order of self-loathing. If she’d paid more attention to her diet and had more self-control when it came to bread, cakes, biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps – the list could go on – maybe she wouldn’t be in a situation where she’d have to watch what she ate forever. Diabetes, she’d discovered to her sorrow, was for life. It wasn’t going to go away; she was never going to be cured, no matter how much weight she lost nor how much exercise she did. She could never go back to her normal way of eating, nor her normal lifestyle, because that was what had got her into this pickle in the first place – andwhywas her every thoughtfood-related?
‘Nora?’
‘Huh? Oh, sorry, I was miles away,’ she said, realising Andrea was waiting for a response. Or hoping she wasn’t about to keel over. ‘Busy, that’s all. I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ she added.
Abruptly she felt a blush whoosh up her chest and into her face. What was she doing in the bakers when this was supposed to be the first day of the rest of her non-baked-goods life?
Grabbing the neckline of her top, she fanned herself rapidly.
‘Hot flush?’ Andrea sympathised. ‘I get them all the time. The damned menopause is a damned nuisance!’
Wordlessly, Nora nodded. It wasn’t strictly a lie – she did have hot flushes – but this one was caused by shame, not the menopause.
