From Darkness to Light

Diabetes, as we know, is a very unpredictable disease. People who control it quite well can succumb to it quickly, while some who neglect it and live a carefree life, can well be bereft of the ill consequences of the condition in comparison to the earlier cohort.

My mother, unfortunately, fell under the first category. She started deteriorating rather suddenly even though she was getting all the best medical help we could muster.

First, she started losing her eyesight. Retinopathy, where the retina of the eye gets irreversibly damaged. My elder sister was already married by that time, so I had to get out of my comfort zone and start helping with household chores along with my studies. Needless to say, her condition was unknowingly affecting my ability to concentrate on my academics, but there was nothing much I could do. Somewhere deep within, I was also getting affected emotionally, which was causing a very indescribable feeling making me very upset and uneasy, a feeling quite alien to me at that time. Now, after about thirty-plus years I can put a name to it – anxiety-induced stress.

Due to the ill effects of diabetes, she too was stressed, and she tried to hide it from all of us, but we could see through her façade, and the combination of her suffering clinically and mentally, induced a profound but invisible shock on to us. We were at a loss to understand how to offer her support but were also unsure of how to take care of our mental well-being at the same time. On top of it, we were not even aware that we were subjected to mental trauma which would remain with us for the rest of our lives.