You know what's funny about chronic illness? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Trust me, I've looked for the humour in it – between the constant health monitoring, the eye rolls from specialists every time I refuse medication, and that judgmental look from my various medical devices that seem to say, "Really? You're gonna do THAT?"

But here's what I did find: hope.

And it came from the most unexpected place…

In the quiet moments of an ordinary afternoon, my world shifted. Not with a dramatic bang or even a whisper, but with a simple blood test result. "Your A1C is 6.9%," my doctor said matter-of-factly, "You are diabetic."

And I'm ashamed to admit that when my doctor had mentioned pre-diabetes in my previous checkup, I brushed it off. Like so many others, I thought, "I feel fine, how bad could it be?"

Now here I was, sitting there stunned, thinking, "But I still feel fine. Shouldn't I feel diabetic?"

You want to hear something ironic? I was raised on the Mediterranean diet before it was cool. Growing up Portuguese, my childhood was steeped in olive oil, fresh vegetables, fish, and whole foods that would make any modern nutritionist swoon. Processed food? That wasn't even in my vocabulary until I moved to North America.

I first became aware that for every ill there is a natural cure when I was 5. My maternal grandmother, who was a force of nature and, although loving to the point of obsession, could be terrifying at the best of times, would chase me round the garden and shovel spoonsful of some nasty concoction – made of egg yolk whipped to a froth with sugar – down my throat, because in her mind, I was too thin and anemic.