I was diagnosed with Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes on August 22, 1991, approximately 18 months after I was born.
It has been 21 years, 2 months and 3 days; 7, 736 days; roughly 185, 640 hours, 668, 304, 000 seconds and counting that I've lived with this incurable disease.
I decided to start blogging about my life with diabetes for many reasons--some for myself and some for others. I felt the need to share my story--though it may not be as interesting in paper as it is in real life. Heads up though, I'm no angel when it comes to T1D...I've made many mistakes that will be apparent in my writing. But fortunately, I've learned from these errors and hope that you can as well. As for you, the reader, you might be reading this for knowledge about the disease itself, relief that someone else with the disease is living a fairly normal life, or clarification that life with diabetes is not a cake walk and others are suffering, too. Whatever the reason, I hope you can laugh, cry, and learn from the "highs and lows" of my life with diabetes.
Just so you know, I am not a writer. I'm actually severely enthralled with science and the study of medicine. I graduate nursing school in May and cannot wait to begin working and hopefully furthering my education. So if I have typos or mishaps in my wording or sentence structure, please forgive me.
Last year I did my Pediatric rotation in nursing school and asked to be placed on the adolescent unit for a couple of clinical days. I wanted to see a child's first moments of finding out he/she had diabetes. Did I want closure? I guess you could say that. But instead of only feeling the pain of the child's tears as he received his first injection, I looked to the parents. Confusion, frustration, depression--these emotions smeared across each of their faces. And it made me wonder...what were my parents thinking when they received the call? The call that their child, their 18-month-old child, was diagnosed with a disease that they did not know the cure for. Not to add that my parents were on a trip, and I was staying with my cousins. Most likely it was the first time they'd taken a trip alone since I was born. Little did they know, they were going to be greeted back home with a crash course on diabetic education. I wonder what their facial expressions would have looked like...
So, as Beth Moore would say in my Esther bible study, "it's tough being a woman..." This time, I'm going to add, "...with Type 1 Diabetes."
But then again, after today's post, I might say, "it's tough being a woman (/man) with a child with Type 1 Diabetes."
"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you." -Deuteronomy 31:6
