Yesterday, despite having what the doctor at the Urgent Care Center later described as, “possibly early pneumonia”, I went with my husband to vote. Our polling place is a local elementary school, and as we walked down the main corridor we saw a bulletin board celebrating the upcoming holidays.

This particular layout was dedicated to Thanksgiving. It was covered in traditional browns and oranges with a three-dimensional turkey in the center surrounded by paper plates, as if to resemble a table set for the big holiday meal. All of the paper plates had words written on them, instead of representations of food. Three of the plates had words you’d expect to find on a elementary school’s holiday bulletin board, things like “food”, “family”, and “fun”. But the fourth plate? The fourth plate was what made me stop dead in my tracks because on it was written the word, (and I swear I am not making this up), “DIABETES”.

Because nothing brings families together or says “Happy Thanksgiving!” like a shared fear that enjoying your favorite holiday meal will lead to an irreversible destruction of your body’s ability to produce and manage its own insulin.