The one about a Gregg's toffee doughnut

[Thurlow]

I love my mother, but bless her she's a martyr to her ailments. She has something like IBS (I think, she's normally very vague on the actual diagnosis) and was suffering today when my parents came to visit. She made a big point about how she'd had no breakfast and just wanted a plain biscuit to nibble on. I said how it was probably good then that I'd only planned soup and bread for lunch, something nice and easy.

We popped into town in the morning, and she decided she wanted needed something to eat as she was feeling a bit wobbly. She also has type diabetes but has failed to actually understand how to manage her diet, and never, never has something to hand when she knows we will be out late morning and knows she will get a bit wobbly). We were in a busy town centre, there's an M&S and a Sainsburys and plenty of places to choose to buy something.

Instead she nipped in to Gregg's and bought and ate... a toffee doughnut

She then spent all of lunch nibbling an unbuttered bit of bread and making protestations about how she just needed something "plain and simple to settle my stomach"

AIBU to still be laughing about this (and now feeling ever so slightly less sympathetic about some of these ailments?)

Reminds me of Nana from the Royle Family who says she never drinks apart from a bottle of stout every night, a sherry at Christmas, a whiskey at New Year and champagne at weddings.

Ah, nothing like someone making up they're own rules - I think you just have to roll with it tbh, you can't 'tell' them anything.

On a more practical note a lot of NHS trusts run courses for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics to learn more about managing their diets. Definitely worth getting her to ask her GP if you think she'd go for something like that.

I know someone like this. She basically eats stuff she knows will make her ill then acts the martyr for ages afterwards. My sympathy reserves were depleted very quickly...

Iam, she actually went on one of those courses when she was first diagnosed but I swear it just went in one ear and out the other!

It's hard to be sympathetic sometimes. I asked her if she'd thought about keeping a food diary for a few months to maybe see if there were any triggers but she just shrugged that off. Would probably interfere with the martyrdom

If only it hadn't been Greggs. I might have kept a straighter face. Or if she'd bought me a belgian bun while there