Posted 1/8/2011 1:51 PM (GMT 0)
I'm sorry for what you are going through. I was on the flip side of this. My mom had CD all of my life, she was diagnosed when I was 1. Even though I suspected I had CD at 13, I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was 23, when my own first born was 1. WEIRD.
But, I handled it pretty much like your mother seems to be. To me it was just, OK, I have this, I know what this is, I can deal with this, lets get on with treatment. To me, having CD, wasn't scary at all, because I had been through so much with my mother. While I knew life would never be the same, I knew what life would be. If the diagnosis was something else, I would have been terrified. I would not have been able to handle diabetes as a life long sentence at that point for example.
I know my mom had trouble accepting my diagnosis because she felt responsible for it, but that certainly isn't the case for you. It is always hard to watch the one's we love go through any difficult situation, physical or emotional. All you can do is offer support. In our case it was wonderful to have someone else to talk to about all the things that were going on. We were our own private support system. My disease followed hers pretty closely so we always had someone who had been there done that and could talk about tests, medications, doctors, and just about anything else that affected us.
Take your cues from your mom. If she is handling it well then, TRY to handle it also. Seeing you upset is only going to do both of you more harm than good in the long run.