No one wants life to be hard. Even if we understand that we grow through challenges, sometimes those challenges just really REALLY suck. You can’t sugar coat it all the time.
Today is a day I refuse to sugar coat what has been my reality for 16 years.
16 years ago, at just 8 years old, I was sick. So sick I had to be picked up early from school, went home with my dad, and slept for 3 hours. When I woke up I threw up and while the flu had been floating around, my sickness didn’t get better over the weekend. My parents had concerns and one thought kept eating at my moms brain.
Monday at school she took me to see a co worker who had previously had gestational diabetes and still had her glucose meter. When my finger was poked and a number over 300 showed up I remember hearing “it could be wrong! I haven’t used it in a long time.”
But even with the reassurance my mom knew reality wasn’t that kind. She took me to the hospital and after one more finger poke it was undeniable.
I had type 1 diabetes.
I was poked over and over as the nurses tried to find a vein to give me fluids and keep me hydrated. Both arms, the top of both hands, and finally it worked.
As a child, this commotion and the lack of communication gave me one thought “I’m going to die.”
We were sent home over night and told to be in Denver the next morning. But even though it was late and it was the middle of calving season, my parents loaded me up in the car and we headed south.
There were so many tears, all the words and information and needles- tons of needles. Even though I was terrified, worried about my parents and probably was the shock knowing my life as I knew it was over, there was some good on that February day.
A kind, loud, and wonderful woman named Tavia. She was the one who first weighed me, tested my blood sugar - which was now a bit low so she also gave me graham crackers and a juice box- and she was also the first person who openly told me she was a diabetic. Just like me she was diagnosed in early childhood. She had an aura of hope radiating off of her. It was so obvious she loved her job and was there to help make life easier for patients and families, especially ones like mine who had just been given the toughest news. Tavia was an angel in the midst of darkness.
No one wants to be sick. No one wants their child to be sick. And on February 28, 2006 I was told I would be sick for the rest of my life.
“You can do anything you want in life, except join the military and fly a plane,” I was told. Everyone tried to reassure me and my parents that diabetes wouldn’t hold me back. That day it sounded like complete lies.
16 years later, I know they were right.
Despite the constant monitoring and medicating, doctors appointments, counting carbs and rollercoasters of high and low blood sugars, I have done what I wanted with my life. It hasn’t stopped me and (sugar coating) I’ve accomplished certain things in my life because of the drive to not let diabetes win.
But reality check, some days- a lot of days- diabetes does win. It wins when I have to stop a good workout because of dropping blood sugars. It wins when I can’t enjoy a treat to celebrate a wedding or birthday because of rising blood sugars. It wins when all I can think about morning, noon, or night is what my sugars are, if I have to eat more or less, and then I get weighed down at the realization that one mess up, one choice could kill me. Controlling my own insulin intake means I am now functioning as my own organ. My own pancreas! I have to keep myself alive every second of every day with no days off and I have to do it while still living a normal life. Imagine being told you have to keep your own heart beating, but you had to also still go to work, run errands, and enjoy life.
Everything is so much harder with diabetes. It’s so tough. I don’t complain about it a lot, but on the anniversary of being diagnosed I feel bitter and angry.
I was 8. I lost part of my childhood. Food became my life and it caused an obsession that led to an eating disorder. I had to miss sleep overs, ended up in the hospital after a school dance, and was always seen as a “sick” kid by adults who didn’t fully understand what was now my life. And the cost! Don’t even get me started on the anger I feel over the money I’ve had to spend to keep myself alive.
I know people have it worse, but no one wants life to be hard. And my level of hard was raised a long time ago.
16 years later I still struggle. I had a terrible weekend of roller coaster sugars. Most days I consider letting my control slip and not caring about my numbers as I have done in the past. Because this is hard.
But I’m surviving, and occasionally thriving, as so many other diabetics do. Tavia still works at the Barbara Davis Center and I saw her last summer at an appointment even though I now go to the adult clinic and she works pediatrics. She’s still a ball of sunshine, a glimmer of hope for scared children and their parents, and a testament of what good can be found despite a lifetime of living with this autoimmune disease.
Even though this is a tough day, it’s made me tougher too.
Happy Anniversary to my Type 1 Diabetes.
Xoxo.
Ps- I hate you.
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