After taking part in the DSMA chat I got inspired to blog, and just tell my story. I have some things I would like to blog about in the future, but I thought that I should start out with a little on me. My story is a little different that most.
I will start with my perfectly normal childhood. I was a child without diabetes. A normal healthy active child. I loved my mom and my dad was my hero, I climbed trees and rode bikes and other kid stuff. I lived outside and I was always busy. I liked school and I played sports. I was the baby girl of 3 girls, and my father's only child. I watched Saturday morning cartoons and went to church on Sundays, and Sunday school. I was always tall for my age and a little on the lanky side, and accident prone as all get out. There were no diabetes camps, or shots, or pumps, no Rufus the bear.
After elementary school, I went to middle school. I chose to be a vegetarian, but I was a middle schooler without diabetes. I had friends and went to dances, and I was a 3 sport athlete, but I never had to manage diabetes while playing sports. My parents never had to be my fill in pancreas. I don't even remember knowing of diabetes. Still no camps, no school nurse visits, still just me.
My high school years brought more of the same. Cross country season to basketball season to track season, homecoming to sweetheart to prom, freshman, sophomore, junior to senior, but I never had to figure out how to hide and insulin pump in a prom dress. I was a high school student without diabetes. I graduated at the top of my class, and next was college.
I had a hard time with deciding what I wanted to be. I entered pre-pharmacy, and ended up as middle childhood education. I ended up being in school for 6 years. I just kept changing majors. I had two different jobs in college, and worked my butt off, you know normal college stuff, but I was a college student without diabetes. I didn't go crazy and stop taking care of myself because I had nothing to take care of. Still just me.
Right after I graduated I found my first teaching job, moved out with a boyfriend, later broke up with him, and got my own place. Normal young adult stuff. Still no diabetes.
It was in the spring of my second year of teaching, a day just like any other day. We had routine health checks at school, and my fasting blood sugar was 187. I stared at that number. I didn't understand what it meant and little did I know that it would change my life forever. I was 26.
It was several months of my life as a "type 2", or so the doctors told me. My life was terrible, my blood sugar spiraled out of control, and my doctor's just gave me more metformin, and januvia, and pills. Nothing worked. I felt awful, my blood sugar would stay over 400 for a coulple days at a time. I was depressed, I drank a lot, and I lived alone. I wanted to give up. I yelled at my mom, refused to find a new doctor, and just didn't want to try anymore. I lost weight, I bottomed out at 115, standing 5'9", and I looked terrible, and I felt like everyone was blaming me. I kept hearing the doctors questions, what are you eating, what are you doing to make your blood sugars so high? I tried so hard. During this time I did meet someone, who I tried to break up with several times. It just wasn't good timing, so I thought it just wasn't meant to be. I was going through this whole big thing, and I didn't think it was fair to drag someone along. Honestly, my stubborness didn't want to be sick and weak in front of someone I didn't know very well.
After months of struggling, I listened to my CDE, and found a new doctor, this time blood result were different, A1c was 14, and oh yeah.... I guess you are a type 1, you need insulin. I got insulin, and started feeling better. My endo is an amazing man, the smartest, most caring person I have ever met, and he is still working to make me better. He is also the person that had to tell me the worst news ever. You have been having these other problems, and there is a chance that your mutant immune system may have attacked your ovaries and there is a chance you won't be able to have children. All I had ever wanted to be was a mommy. And I felt like that had just been taken away from me. I cried right there in the office, and the whole way home.(an hour and a half) I thought about all of the things that I would never get to do with my babies. How could my own body do this to me? First my pancreas, and now my ovaries, what would be next?? Clearly, this was war.
Since then I am learning everyday, trying to be the best I can. If my diabetes was a person, she wouldn't even be in kindergarten yet. There are 11, 12 and 13 year olds that know more about diabetes and have had diabetes longer than I have. I have so much to learn, and a lot of the time I feel alone. My story is a little different. I have only used 2 meters, shots for 2 years, and my OmniPod was my first pump. (and I include that in one of my 2 meters) My first was a one touch mini in pink. I have only used novalog and levemir, nothing else. Weird for someone that is staring 30 right in the face. So much of my life was just me, no D.
Oh, but to end on a happy note, that guy that I kepy trying to leave, started going to endo appointments with me, knows how to run my insulin pump, and how to give me my glucagon, and he is now my husband, and I did wear an omnipod under my wedding dress. Oh, yeah and that baby that we weren't sure that we would have, turned one in June.
