My Diabetes Story _ part 1

I read on Kerri's sixuntilme.com blog about a med student who diagnosed himself with type 1 diabetes and it made me want to write about my own unique road to diagnosis.

It started my sophomore year of college, when Robin, Tiffany and I went into OKC to sell our plasma for a little bit of cash. If I remember correctly, it was a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Well, we walk in and are taken back at different times for a few tests to determine if we are candidates to be donors. I don't really remember much, except waiting a really long time. I saw Robin go back into the waiting room and saw Tiffany being taken into a third room, I still waited. A doctor, not one of the technicians, came to talk to me. In a nutshell he said the couldn't accept my plasma because of a high blood sugar reading and that I needed to be tested for diabetes. Tiffany was already hooked up to machines and Robin was in the waiting room, turned down because of low iron levels.

That was in November, in March I was home for Spring Break and a even though I can't remember how it came up, a different Tiffany took me to her house to test my blood sugar on her dad's meter. I don't remember the reading, the numbers didn't mean anything to me at that point, but I remember Tiffany's mom calling my mom. I went home and talked to my Mom, who had already called the doctor and we went straight in.

Everything at the doctor's office was pretty undramatic. I don't remember tests being run or a big scene. More waiting, but that was it. It was yeah, you are, here is a prescription. At that point it was just assumed I was type 2, I was on the heavy side of normal and over 18 so type 1 or 1.5 wasn't considered. I don't even remember my mom being that mad that I had waited 5 months to tell her about the whole plasma thing. I didn't have any side effects, no weight loss, no extreme thirst, nada. I do remember that I felt like all my feelings of being the fat girl had been confirmed and that I had a "fat" person's disease. I knew nothing about type 1 or type 2, no one tested me for an antibody that was attacking my beta cells. It would be 13 years before I would hear about type 1.5 or C-peptide levels.

I do remember my mom buying me the book, Sugar Isn't Everything. It was about a preteen girl with all the classic type 1 symptoms going into a coma and then being diagnosed. A little bit of fear is good, it can still keep me on track. But I felt very alone. Very alone.

I went back to Shawnee with the meds and later met with a dietitian who spoke way over my head even if I had been listening. Looking back on it I wish I would have been diagnosed 2 years earlier. Living at home, I would have had my mom there to take some of the responsibility about carb counting and good choices and then she could have taught me. Instead it was all just too much. I remember at one point while in the campus dinning hall Jana telling me that I would some day have to start eating something besides cereal. How clueless was I that I thought cereal was a good choice? I am sure it had to do with the dietitian using cereal as an example of checking portion control.

I don't remember how long it was after Spring Break, but I remember being home for the weekend and going to church. During the singing before the sermon I started to loose it. I excused myself and went into the hallway and cried. I was still crying and asked a nursery worker to go get my mom. She came out and we cried together. I don't remember feeling sad, just extremely overwhelmed. And as we cried, (and as I cry now) I remember just wanting to be taken care of and my mom just wanting to take care of me, but this time it was up to me.

Kerri at sixuntilme has written about the differences between type 1 and 1.5 and the life before diabetes. Many type 1's don't remember life without diabetes and so there is no adjustment. For type 1.5 there is a clear before and after and a total life altering switch. I wouldn't really change it though because I am thankful I did not have to deal with diabetes as a child. The later the onset of diabetes the fewer long term complications and the chances of Claire developing diabetes is also much lower. And if we can't change it, we might as well thank God for it.

to be continued, stay tuned