Diabetes Type 3

The cause of dementia

March 2023

Excitement filled the air as Ken pulled into the driveway with his two sons. It was Spring Break and they had come to stay a week. At Christmas time I had resolved to be able to speak more Japanese by the next school holidays when we would see them again, but… my communication was pretty limited! However, Bob and Missy could speak more Japanese now, and I was content with that. At least they could enjoy communicating with their cousins!

Ken readily translated when needed, and even when not needed. Since he had to do a lot of translating for his job, it seemed he was just on auto mode, translating for Okasan and I, even though she understood and spoke English!

When taking a drive the next afternoon, we pulled into a very cute patisserie. Clearly we should have come earlier in the day. The shelves in the refrigerated glass cabinets were near empty, and the little shop was just crowded with people.

Japanese patisseries are just so fun to visit. You get to buy individual slices of cake, so rather than hope everyone likes one particular cake flavour, you can buy many different types of cakes to suit each persons preferences.

Well, at this particular time, when the shop was full and the shelves near empty, Ken wasted no time. He went straight to the counter and cleared out the remainder of the cakes, but not wanting to be too greedy, and being the polite and considerate Japanese that he is, he left just one strawberry jelly cake for the customer behind him!! (So kind of him!) I imagine the mother and father would have sacrificed and let their young daughter eat the precious piece! We didn’t get to choose our favourite cakes this time, we’d just have to be grateful we go anything!

I love visiting patisseries, and eating the delicacies! But, when you have family members with dietary restrictions, there is a cloud that settles over me, and I just can’t enjoy the experience to the full.

The anticipation of tasting the delicious looking cakes Ken had bought was dampened by the fact that both Bob and Okasan wouldn’t be able to eat them, and whilst Bob would be happy with a substitute, Okasan wouldn’t be. My mind trailed back a few months…

“I got the results back from mum’s appointment.” It was Shujin, sharing the news. “Mum has diabetes type 3. She’ll need to go on a diabetes diet to help control her blood sugar levels.”

I inhaled as tears freely flowed. Not again! I thought. I only just emerged from doing crazy diets for over 10 years, and now I have to do it again?! I didn’t mean for the news to become all about me. I should have been grateful that her dementia was due to diabetes, for if one controls the diabetes, the dementia can improve! But alas, whilst that was kinda good news, it was also bad news to me as I saw myself once again chained to the kitchen, following strict diets… Due to Bob’s allergies and food intolerances, I had done strict, elimination diets and gut healing diets for nearly 10 years, in order to heal his body. Just in the last 12 months I decided it was time for him to take ownership on what he ate. In those ten years we had seen much improvement, and even though we hadn’t achieved complete healing, I felt he was strong enough to start taking ownership. As I looked into the not-to-distant future of him leaving the nest, I concluded that he needed to learn how to make his own decisions. And so, whilst I made good and appropriate food at home, I let him decide what he ate, at home and when we were out, and let him suffer the natural consequences of making a not-so-good choice.

It was so freeing, to let go of that strong hold I had had. For my brain to be free from stressing over what food he can have, or not. Free from consistently calculating what he’d eaten and if he’d go over the threshold having more… It was now his choice. I had really been enjoying this less-stressful approach (although I will admit, it was certainly hard at times to bite my tongue!). And now this. Now my brain has to think about food in a diet sort of way again. It’s not just cutting sugar that one needs to consider. I knew there was much more to learn. But sugar was most definitely an enemy. One that needed to be eliminated as strictly as possible… And here we were, in a cake shop…

I expressed my concern to Ken. Okasan would not be happy to sit and watch us eat cake! This particular patisserie, however, had some kind of cheese soufflé that was very low sugar, hardly sweet at all. Ken had thoughtfully bought one for Okasan. I was put at ease. If she was going to break the diet, then that was certainly the best of all the bad options!

That evening after dinner, the cakes were pulled out. Even with cake on the table, it was somehow hard to get all 9 people around the table together! The cheese soufflé was passed to Okasan and the remaining cakes set in the middle of the table. Being family, we were all happy to share and taste all the cake slices, rather than just having one slice for ourselves.

Somehow, between the serving and the waiting, Okasan had consumed her soufflé, so when the rest of us started digging into the cakes, she expected to join in. The adult turned into a pouting child. What was meant to be a time of joy turned into a total disaster!

I sat there, moaning inside. Sugar is poison, especially to Okasan! I didn’t want her to eat it. But Okasan didn’t want to miss out. Ken wanted to create happy memories and had the opinion that it’s a once off, let’s enjoy. Shujin was stuck somewhere in the middle. The tension in the room could have been sliced with a knife.

How could this have gone so wrong?!

An eternity later, it seemed, Okasan triumphantly put a small spoonful of cake in her mouth before leaving the table and heading to the bathroom for a shower, leaving the rest of us to “enjoy” the cakes.

Tension slowly eased as conversation drifted away to other topics, but inside I hurt. I put so much effort into cooking balanced meals for Okasan, three times a day. In a foreign country. I don’t know how to cook Japanese food except for sushi and curry. Which she can have neither. I see many vegetables in the supermarket that look just like this country: foreign. One such vegetable reminds me of a creature I’d find in the sea. Another vegetable looks like a very thin elephant leg. What do I do with these?? How do I make them taste good? Unlike Shujin, who enjoys cooking, I don’t! Adding special diets and foreign ingredients (and missing familiar ones) into the mix just stirs together to create a huge pot of stress for me!

Each day, each meal, however, I show up, and I cook. With much consideration and balance.

Now, it somehow feels like it’s under-valued. Under appreciated. That I have to take care of Okasan and keep her well, but others can just come in and have a good time and do whatever they like, and then leave me to do the hard yards. And, as we were to discover, pick up the pieces afterwards.

Life’s just not fair!