Sugar Free Icecream

I've recently started doing sudoku puzzles again.

I used to be pretty obsessed with them; so much so that my mother bought about six different books filled with various sudokus. I quickly became less keen about them, but as I mentioned, I've become significantly more into them again. I'm starting on a book of 400 and making my way rather quickly through them. For some reason the answers are coming more easily and I'm not sure what to think about that.

Perhaps my way of thinking has shifted slightly.

I like to think that over the last two years (maybe even three years) I've become more mature. Which really isn't hard if you knew what I was like before than. I have a really good grasp of my faults these days, but that doesn't seem to stop me making them known to people.

My Par-Par (my dad's dad) recently admitted himself into hospital after feeling very short of breath (dsypnoea). A little bit of history on my grandfather makes it rather evident that he has himself a set of risk-factors for some of the most common and serious diseases. He has Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), he was overweight (but has lost a lot of weight in order to control his T2D), he had 3º heart block which led to the application of a pace-maker, and as a result of complicated cataract surgery and macular degeneration - he's now legally blind.

Regardless of all these issues, at almost-90 years old, my ParPar is a very intelligent man and despite the occasional loss of memory that's pretty common for a man in his ninth decade he has full control of his mental capabilities. In fact, he has a photographic memory (of what he can manage to see) and still remembers information and poems that he learnt as a child. He also likes to think of himself as somewhat of a medical information connoisseur because he worked as a medical supplies salesman for many years, and to his credit he does know a lot about the profession for someone who just sold the products.

When I went to visit him in the hospital today we had the following conversation.

PP: So I don't think I have diabetes any more.
ME: Oh... you sure about that?
PP: Well I had my blood sugar taken the other day and it was 6.1 (normal) and then this morning it was 4.5 (normal again)
ME: Well the hospital knows that you're a diabetic so all of your food is going to be sugar free to avoid the obvious problem.

Random medical insert: Diabetes, regardless of type, is characterised by increased blood glucose levels as a result of reduced glucose uptake into the cells. We get glucose from most foods, primarily sugars, and our body's cells use it to make energy in order to keep use functioning as normal as possible. The high glucose levels have many problematic effects and unlike Type 1 which can be maintained by insulin injections, Type 2 patients tend to be resistant to insulin and therefore their glucose levels need to maintained by their diet and exercise. The disease despite total management, is incurable and a life-long problem.

Story continues,
PP: Oh I know that... but I think they must have made a mistake in the first place. Because my glucose levels couldn't be that low if I was diabetic.
ME (thinking): they could if you weren't getting any sugar at all.
ME: Pretty sure they're holding all sugar hostage from you like pirates!!
PP: And I think that the only reason why my levels were 28 (Very very high!!) -
ME (interrupting):THEY WERE WHAT?!?!?
PP (looks at me oddly as I splutter)
PP: As I was saying, the only reason they were so high was because I've been eating all that icecream recently.
ME: Well that could definitely do it... Hang on a minute, isn't that ice-cream sugar free...

The point of my opening about my own faults is that my family brought up this conversation and tried to tell me that obviously my grandfather didn't really have diabetes. Then, when I tried to explain that my grandfather's sugar levels could be managed at a completely normal level by the right diet and exercise (which obviously the hospital was doing), I was told that I wasn't always right and that when I explained medical things I shouldn't act like a 'know-it-all'.

I don't think I'm a 'know-it-all', far from it in fact, but I do have slightly more information about things like this than them because it's what I study and think about ALL THE TIME. Just like I don't question my sister's knowledge of english literature or grammar because she's a teacher, or question my dad over different laws and their interpretation because he's a solicitor, or try to explain an engineering sequence to my older brother since he's an engineer, or think that I could ever understand art and painting better than my mother. I find it absolutely infuriating that they think have the right to shut down my knowledge because I may in fact speak with slightly more confidence than them.

I know my faults, but I also know that my strengths are talking about medically-related topics because I study hard enough to be confident in some of what I say.