Almost every morning you can find Shirley Wallace working up a sweat at the Fort Myers Center for Rehabilitation and Wellness. She says, “I started out at 441 pounds I’m down 70 pounds now. It took a while to put it on so it’s going to take a while to get it off.”

Shirley says she isn’t working hard just to see the weight come off. She is also fighting a family history of serious diabetes. “I don’t want to end up like my mamma on a dialysis machine, no lungs, and no kidneys, so she failed and my grandmamma lost her legs. It’s just me fighting it by myself.”

Shirley began that fight in May. Within only eight years she had lost both her Grandmother and Mother to diabetes. Shirley vowed that her life was going to turn out differently. “I said I don’t want no doctor cutting on me or nothing I just want to lose the weight and as I lose the weight I’ll be able to stop taking certain medicines, which I was on the insulin but I’m not anymore.”

While Shirley’s medication intake is going down her energy level is going up. “It’s good, so much energy, you know it don’t take me five minutes to get up - out of the chair or out of bed. I don’t have to walk through Wal-Mart and hold onto a cart. People’s here to help you it’s a wonderful thing I’m glad I did it.”

To find out more about wellness center and diabetes programs log onto www.leememorial.org. Type 2 Diabetes is by far the most common form of diabetes in America.