“I am proud of you,” Karen Bruce, my nurse practitioner, told me this morning at the Hoosick Falls, N.Y., Medical Center, and I blushed a bit, I never got many good report cards in my life, I never got one really good report card except when I took Latin classes at a Quaker school in Atlantic City one summer. “You are really motivated,” she said, “and I see a lot of people who are not.”

After two months of treatment for diabetes under Karen’s sharp, benign – but very direct – care, my numbers are now normal, huge drops in the blood sugar levels of just a couple of months ago. Karen’s praise was gracious and I appreciated it – I got a SpongeBob sticker – but it is very much a team effort, through visits and e-mails and talks Karen and I have figured out the best approach to this disease for me – three or four insulin injections a day and some other medication by pills, some additional ideas about eating. This morning, as always, we huddled together and pored over the diary in which I keep my blood readings and tests results, studying my numbers as a Kremlinologist would pore over Russian news reports. We always make some adjustments, tweaks and corrections. Karen says I am just about there, just about where we expected to be by the end of the year.

I fended the Diabetes off for some years through holistic care, but it was time to confront it more directly. Karen Bruce helped me to see that, and I am grateful to her.

It was a challenging, even chaotic time for me, but I am getting a grip on it. I’m injecting myself efficiently, am handling the needles, meters, strips and medications well, I am figured out when I have to eat and how to keep my blood sugar levels down low enough so that my eyesight and internal organs are not damaged. I have a great medical guide and a pharmacist who loves to help.  Diabetes is not one thing but many things, a complex combination of nutrition, lifestyle, carbohydrates, organs, sugar. It takes awhile to figure it out, and my body is helping me respond. I am used to eating when I want, not when I must. I have a lot of changes to make and change seems to follow me like a Coon Hound on the trail.

I appreciate having a health care practitioner I can trust, Karen and I have talked about the many other tests, pills and procedures people my age are asked to do and expected to do, she respects my feelings that I do not wish to live a life bounded by pills, tests and procedures. Diabetes 2 is something that can be controlled, and I am happy and proud to be controlling it, to be healthier and feel healthier. I have dropped the conceit that I can do all of this by myself, another gift.

Diabetes is another opportunity to navigate the Fear Machine. In Karen’s office, diabetes warnings, videos and alarms are broadcast continuously on a TV camera in the lobby. In America, people are not asked to take care of themselves, they are continuously warned to do so. People are eager to share diabetes horror stories – blindness, dialysis, amputations, nerve damage. I am eager to share success stories and I will continue to work hard to be able to do that.

I see Diabetes as a chess match with my body, there are ways and strategies to approach it, and I see my treatment with Karen as a way to confront things about my health that I was avoiding while still maintaining my own freedom of choice about health care. I look forward to seeing Karen, she is smart, funny and honest. I look forward to learning more about how my body works and making the adjustments I need to make in my life.

Life happens every day, my choice is how to respond to it. Life is a gift, every day. Diabetes is not a struggle story for me, it is not a drama, I will not use it to frighten or warn people about it or to complain about my difficult life. Life challenges me every day, and Diabetes is another challenge, another gift in itself.