My DM is over 70, and was diagnosed as Type 2 diabetic 10 years ago. In her case, you could call it “lifestyle diabetes”... she has been overweight my entire life, doesn’t really exercise (she has a treadmill and uses it, but it’s more of a quick gentle stroll than an actual workout) and has a terrible diet. She’s had to inject herself with medicine (not insulin, I’m not sure what it is) for about a year, possibly longer. She has to test her blood glucose and is very happy when she gets a low reading, but she does it at random when she feels like it, so I’m not entirely sure how reflective the results are of her actual state. She often says that she doesn’t think she’ll see 80/live to see my baby DS growing up/is worried she’s going to lose her sight/feet (she already has problems with both) etc etc.
From the beginning she treated it more as an inconvenience than a life threatening disease and did very little to change the habits that got her there in the first place. She blamed it on a chocolate addiction, in an I-can’t-help-it-I’m-a-chocoholic sort of way. Last year she paid a small fortune to have a hypnotherapist rid her of this chocolate addiction. And it sort of worked; she hasn’t had chocolate since. What she has done is replace it with other crap instead.
Since lockdown started I’ve been doing her shopping online for her and honestly her shopping list is alarming. A typical order would include two packs of plain hob nobs, two big tubs of full fat cottage cheese, two multipacks of hula hoops, two punnets of green grapes, three bags of fruit pastilles, three bags of wine gums, two bags of toffee popcorn, two tubs of dairylea spread, 5 bananas, two bottles of white zinfandel, 4 pints of whole milk. A few times she’s even ordered cream cakes. Oh and some Muller light Greek yogurt and maybe the odd vegetable (usually salad). This is to last a week.
But she’s really proud that she hasn’t had any chocolate 
.
This week, however, she has made a few changes, and she’s very pleased with herself. She’s only having the three bags of wine gums, no fruit pastilles. She hasn’t ordered hob nobs or hula hoops, but she has ordered a multipack of quavers and two very fatty cheeses (to have with the water biscuits she ordered last week).
I said that I thought she’d decided not to buy popcorn or sweets anymore, to which her response was “I’ve only bought popcorn and wine gums, not the sugary ones. No sweet biscuits or hoola hoops, and no cheese biscuits 😇 I think i’m doing quite well.”
I reminded her that there’s a crap tonne of sugar in the wine gums and popcorn (gave her the actual figures)- “Yes I know, but the injections clear most of it, and remember this is a week, not daily”
I pointed out that the point of the injections isn’t to enable her to eat a load of sugar. And that I know for a fact that she doesn’t space all that stuff out over a week, the sweet snacks are gone within a few days. “Well actually I do pretty well for me. I’ve already cut a lot of sugar and carbs out. No chocolate for nearly a year!! I’m feeling pretty good about myself”
And yet, later on in the day... “Uh-oh on the news, most covid deaths underlying illness is type 2 diabetes 😱 😭”
I brought up the fact that she’s got popcorn, crisps, sweets and an assortment of cheese in her shopping order... “I like living life on the edge.
Some of my pinprick results make me diabetes free!!”
I mean what the fuck do I say to that? How do I make her see that it’s no good her complaining when she eats so much rubbish? I feel like refusing to do her shopping for her, or refusing to order those items, but a) I’d never hear the end of it and b) she’d only get someone else to buy it for her.
I’m really worried. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?