It was a beautiful, sunny Friday March 25, 2011. I was happy to be walking home on such a warm day after a long day of school, but little did I know my life was about to change forever. After I walked in the door my parents greeted me and told me my doctor called, with the results of my blood test from the previous day, and that I had to be taken to the ER because I have type one diabetes.
Quick Side Note:
Type one diabetes is an incurable, hereditary disease, and is thought to be auto-immune because your immune system attacks your pancreas causing it to make too little or no insulin at all. Making someone with type one diabetes insulin-dependent.
While in someone with type two diabetes your body cannot use the insulin it makes, this can usually be reversed with a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Now back to the story...
After getting to the ER, and being poked with countless needles, the doctor came in to talk to me and my family. He basically said my life would never be the same, I'll have to live with this for the rest of it because it's incurable. That's when the seriousness of the disease hit me. I was in total shock that this would even happen to me!
This experience made me appreciate life more, I used to over exaggerate to situations, and say "I hate my life", but I never do that now. Sure this disease is a BIG pain in the ass, but there are other things in life that are worst, just like the song by Monty Python (look below for the video), "always look on the bright side of life", and that's what I do. It also makes me very appreciative of living in Canada and having free health care, and my parents having health insurance, because without it? Man, I'd be broke, this damn disease is so expensive. So, never do I take a day for granted or "wish I wasn't alive" because things can always be worse than they are. I'm just going to live my life with this pain in ass, and I'm going to do it happily.
Here is Monty Python's song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
Have any questions about this disease? Leave them below I'd love to answer them for ya. :)
Sarah, thank you for being so open and honest. I love that you are willing to answer people's questions about the disease. Is it common for type 1 diabetes to present so late in childhood? I, for some reason, always thought that type 1 diabetes was something that was discovered in early childhood. Do you have to eat a specific diet to help regulate your body or is that just applicable to type 2 diabetes?
ReplyDeleteI really admire your positive attitude to a disease that will impact you the rest of your life. It's amazing how people dealing with various issues, such as yourself, can show such strength and always think that things could be worse.
type one diabetes is also called juvenile diabetes, but for my family type one has been known to show up a lot later in life. For example my great grandmother was not diagnosed until she was 50, so I think it just depends on your body. As for a specific diet, it's not as important as it is for type 2, not saying healthy eating isn't important, but I'm free to pretty much eat whatever I want as long as I correct it with insulin.
DeleteI think that a lot of people would find this a very hard thing to deal with but you have such a positive attitude. As I found with karate, if you push through the pain and move forward, you can still enjoy many other things in life instead of giving up and letting something bring you down. When you found out you had type 1 diabetes, did you have to change your lifestyle or can you still do everything that you could before you were diagnosed?
ReplyDeleteI can still do pretty much everything I used to do, except eat a ton of sugar that is. I had to change my lifestyle a little, just because now I can't go out to eat for dinner without looking at the nutrition facts for everything, also I have to monitor my blood sugar while I exercise to make sure my blood sugar doesn't just drop. It's interesting how two different experiences can have the same defining moment on people eh?
DeleteWow that sucks. But you are really positive about it. I think having diabetes would just totally drain my spirit and I would be depressed all the time, but you've taken it as a life lesson. That kind of optimism is extremely admirable!
ReplyDeleteThanks :) At the beginning I was depressed almost everyday but then I realized that I'm stuck with this for the rest of my life, and it's not worth being depressed for the rest of my life.
DeleteI don't really know how bad type 1 is to take care of, but my dad has type 2 and I didn't see him doing a lot of things to keep it in check either than eating healthy, checking his blood sugar once a day, taking his medication and always keeping a few sweets with him (which I feel didn't really impact his life a lot). Is it much different than type 2 in the treatment that you have to take or are they very similar, and does it affect your day-to-day life a lot?
ReplyDeleteYeah I give myself about 4 needles a day to keep my blood sugar in check. It doesn't really affect my day-to-day life because I try to live my life as normal as I can. I only have to watch how much sugar I have and make sure my blood sugar doesn't drop when I'm exercising. Other than that I'm not too affected! :)
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