In October, 2007, I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant with my second child. My husband and I were healthy and active, ate a primarily vegetarian diet and worked out at the gym five or six times a week. An avid cyclist, I continued to ride my bike throughout my pregnancy. I was stunned, then, when my midwife called to let me know that I had failed a routine Glucose Tolerance Test to screen for pregnancy-induced Gestational Diabetes. She broke the news gently, letting me know that my results were "slightly elevated." I would later learn, however, that my blood sugar was dangerously high.

In those first moments, I was buried by the weight of the diagnosis. I feared for my precious child. I felt the burden of an enormous guilt, as if I had done something to create the illness within me. It seemed a personal failure, indicative of some bigger shortcoming. My focus, however, quickly shifted to the baby for whom I was responsible. I found a doctor who specialized in treating women with Gestational Diabetes, I ran out and bought arm fulls of Diabetic Cookbooks, and I poured over literature on the disease. In the process, I began down a path I never anticipated walking and found, to my surprise, that the diagnosis was not a condemnation but, rather, a gift.

My grandmother was a remarkable woman who had traveled the world. She loved adventure novels and, in her later years when her health had failed her, I would bring her books by Krakauer and Nabokov. She was also a diabetic, diagnosed with Type I as an adult. She managed tight control of the disease until her death and, in the process, was the benefactor of hope and courage for me in those early days following my own diagnosis. I suddenly saw her struggle in a new light, and recalled fondly the moments I spent watching her check her sugars, portion out her food, and inject herself with insulin. I wished desperately for her counsel, but found strength in those memories. Months later, when I delivered a healthy baby girl, I named her after the woman who had brought me through my own battle with diabetes. She was, after all, my grandmother's most beautiful legacy.

In the days following the birth of my daughter, it became clear that my illness was not a function of the pregnancy. There had been indications early on that supported a diagnosis other than Gestational Diabetes and, when my blood sugars failed to return to normal after giving birth, my doctors began examining other alternatives. Ultimately, I was diagnosed with slow progressing diabetes, or Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults (LADA). My doctor held his breath as he told me that I, unlike most women diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes, would never again be free of the illness. To my surprise, it seemed not to matter. I had learned to control my blood sugar but, more importantly, I had learned to live with diabetes.

For me, there is a mindfulness embodied in being a diabetic. I had long focused on health and wellness. I had believed, prior to being diagnosed with diabetes, that health was a matter of living without disease. After the diagnosis, however, I learned that "health" could be dynamic, that it could be the found in the ebb and flow of controlling those things you are able and finding a way to accept those things you cannot. The focus of my workouts shifted from acquiring mastery over my body to the understanding of how my body might respond to activity, food and stress, and to manipulating my own habit in order to better my athletic performance. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of how my body reacted to things that once seemed benign. Instead of just eating, consumption became a conscious act with measurable consequences. Anger, anxiety, nervousness all took a toll that could be read on a glucometer. It was an awareness of my physical self I had never before experienced. In that sense, those of us living with diabetes have been given the unique - and altogether unexpected - gift of consciousness.

Of course, it is easy enough to forget that there is a nugget of good fortune in being diabetic. Between needles and lancets, highs and lows, there is not one among us who faces the disease without fear and frustration. I know, however,that my own children are at high risk for developing the disease. Both my husband and I have family trees riddled with diabetes. I recognize, though, that my optimism will carry them through should the day ever come...just as my grandmother's legacy carries me.

Rebecca Loy Furuta This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.