Meet Maria*

Maria D. is a 47 year old Hispanic woman who has lived in the U.S. for 7 years. She was diagnosed with diabetes a few years after she came to the U.S. Maria was not completely surprised about her diagnosis because her parents had diabetes, but the diagnosis was still hard on her at first:

Well, when the doctor told me, I simply just kind of sat there thinking about it. But when I got home I started crying. I was sad, very sad. But I’ve always known that, I always assumed I would have diabetes some time in my life because both my mother and father had diabetes. My father has already died from diabetes. But hardly anyone knew my father had diabetes because you know how men are -- if one man tells another man he has diabetes, they start whispering and talking about them. So he wanted to avoid all that. He didn’t want people talking about him. He tried to ignore it and didn’t do much to take care of it. My mother still lives with diabetes. I was always the heaviest person of my four brothers and sisters, but I never paid attention to my weight until now.

* Maria is a fictional representation of an individual living with diabetes. Any similarity to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental.