Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Speechless

I've read lots of great posts lately about educating and advocating. I just can't figure out how to do that when I'm speechless. Today at a work luncheon, small pieces of toffee were passed around for us to sample as a potential client gift. I had one that measured maybe 1/2 an inch, and the lady across the table from me looks at me and says very loudly...."You can't eat that!". She then proceeds to tell everyone at the table "She is diabetic!" Then she turns to me again with a scowl on her face and says "You're cheating!!!" No, she wasn't joking. All I could manage to get out was "I take insulin so I can eat. Here's my pump (pointing)". I knew that anything I could say would be useless in convincing this lady of anything. One of my co-workers nodded and shot me a look of understanding and encouragement, and I frankly think the rest of them were as dumbstruck as I was. So perhaps staying silent was the best thing I could have done so that her rudeness could just echo in the conference room without interference. I have the urge to send her some educational material about diabetes, or perhaps an excerpt from a few of the wonderful "6 things" posts that you guys have written, but I doubt it would be worth the effort.