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Charlene was eager to start cooking in her apartment after living in a nursing home for two years. She wanted tasty food and she wanted to cook it for herself. She found it especially trying for someone attempting to eat gluten free in a nursing home.

“At the time … I had very limited choices for nutritious gluten-free meals. Quite often, it was a plate of gluten-free pasta, or Rice Krispies,” she explained.

During her two years in a nursing home, her husband had passed away unexpectedly. This left Charlene with no place to go home to. Having never lived alone, she was being discharged from a nursing home to live independently.

Once settled in her new apartment, she began to cook for herself. Her concerns were to make nutritious food that also tasted good. Charlene admits she put on weight after leaving the nursing home. “Knowing about food and nutrition is very helpful for weight loss and a lot of things, seeing as how I am doing everything on my own now,” she said.

About a year after transition, when her transition services were about to expire, she was offered a spot in the Diabetes Education Class at The Independence Center. The class is part of a program to help people with disabilities learn how to prevent or control diabetes through diet and exercise. This is important because people with disabilities experience diabetes at a much higher rate than the general population.

Charlene takes a great deal of notes throughout the Diabetes Education Class. “They teach us how the pancreas works, what glucose is and how it goes into the cells, what are simple carbs, complex carbs, a lot of information. Every two months we come here and talk to Martha the nutritionist, and she’ll catch up on what we’ve been doing and give us a new set of information to practice the next two months and then come back.

“I think one of the biggest things [I’ve learned] is peas are not a vegetable. Peas are 100-percent carbs. If you have peas on your plate, then you [shouldn’t] have the potatoes. We were really upset about the peas,” she chuckled good-naturedly.

When asked if there is one word that describes the difference in her as a person between now and eighteen months ago, Charlene answered enthusiastically: “Independence! I’m way independent now! I had always been married so I didn’t know anything about living alone. The Independence Center with the community transition program was amazing. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know what I would have done because I didn’t know anything about where to begin.”

The Diabetic Education program was made possible by a $7,500 grant from the Myron Stratton Grants Program. Support from the program aims to promote healthy living as a person with diabetes or prediabetes. It serves to make her independence that much more secure, so she can live as she wants to live – independently.