Am I Going to Die?

Where It All Began...

October 27, 2001. That's the day that changed my life forever.

When I was five years old, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a life-threatening autoimmune disease in which a person's pancreas stops producing insulin - a hormone essential to the ability to get energy from food. It affects both children and adults suddenly and changes life as they know it forever. It cannot be prevented and there is no cure.

I've been living with this disease for 16 years. I was forced to grow up, even though I was so little. I had more responsibilities than most kids my age had. I still have these responsibilities, and they'll never go away.

I don't really remember many of the symptoms I had. From what I do remember, I was always thirsty. I liked to drink warm orange juice and warm milk from a sippy cup all the time. I was sitting in the family room at my grandma's house, and I kept asking for milk and juice almost every ten to fifteen minutes. My mom told me I needed to chill out, but I didn't, because I was so thirsty all the time. (When someone's blood sugar is high, they become thirsty so their body can flush out all the extra sugar in their body and since my body stopped producing insulin, my body couldn't regulate all the sugar I was having, so my blood sugar was high all the time.)

I remember coming home from my grandma's house and relaxing for a little bit. My friend Sophie came over with her mom and asked me to play with her. My mom let me, that way I wouldn't be scared. My brother, Joey, was in third grade, so he was still in school when all of this happened. My dad was out of town in Rhode Island for business. We had to wait for Joey to come home before we went anywhere. When Joey came home, we took him to my grandma's house, then we were off to the hospital.

The Hospital

I remember not knowing exactly what was going on, or where we were going. It was evening, almost night time. When we were close to the hospital, I remember seeing all of these signs, and bright lights, but not exactly knowing what they said. Once we entered the hospital, I remember being taken into this tiny room with my mom. They told me to sit down on the recliner doctor bed thing; of course I did as I was told. The room was all white. White walls, white floor, white ceiling, everything was white besides the one black chair in the room. As I was sitting there patiently, I saw the doctor holding a large needle in his hand, when I saw it, I became scared and went to go grab my mom's hand. They had to draw my blood for some tests from my hand. As the doctor put the needle in my hand, I was squeezing my mom's hand so hard that I thought it was going to fall off. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I remember hearing my screams echo in the room, and down the hall. After my tears dried, and I stopped screaming, my mom and I were taken into another room. This room was larger, but still quite small. The walls were still white, but there was a tiny green couch in there, too. There was a bathroom and the bathroom door had a pinkish color to it.

When they first tested my blood sugar level, it was around 750. This, as any diabetic would know, is really, really high. After being told I had diabetes, I asked, "Am I going to die?" I think since the name "diabetes" has "die" in it, I assumed that meant death. That night, my mom had to sleep on the tiny green couch in my hospital room. She was probably so uncomfortable, but there was nothing she could do. She was probably just as scared as I was. Her little girl had an autoimmune disease that she wasn't very familiar with. It's kinda like one of those things where you know about it, but if it happened to you, or someone you really cared about, you'd have no idea what to do.

I had a hard time sleeping in that uncomfortable bed, the IV in my hand didn't help much either. The next morning, the nurse asked me where I wanted my first insulin shot ever and I told her my arm. The first time I had that shot; I knew I was in for something I didn't want. I didn't want to take shots four or more times a day, I didn't want to deal with all of this. I so badly just wanted to go home.

Going Home

That afternoon I did get to go home. I was in the hospital for two days, which is pretty short for a new diabetic. I went back to my grandma's house to pick up my brother and take him home, too. I returned to kindergarten in the next day or two, I don't exactly remember. Everything seemed different, though. Everything was different. I hated taking shots and poking my finger so many times every day.

Where It Got Bad

I was pretty good with my diabetes and controlling it up about until fourth grade. I just got so fed up with everything, I hated it. I wanted it to vanish and go away. I thought if I didn't act like I had diabetes, people would stop asking, people would think I was normal. I didn't want to be known as "the diabetic." I hated that label. I hated, and I mean hated when teachers used to ask me if I could eat a classmate's cupcake for their birthday. I know they're liable for me at school and they just wanted to make sure I was okay, but I used to get so embarrassed. I would think, "just shut up already, I don't want people to know about diabetes, I hate this." If my friends and their parents didn't know about my diabetes, then I wouldn't tell them. I thought they didn't need to know. Nothing will happen to me. I'll be fine. Boy, was I wrong.

Some nights when my blood sugar was high, I'd get sick. I'd feel like I needed to throw up. I had the worst stomach aches in the entire world. My stomach felt like I was going to jump out of my skin and run away. It felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach, the pain was unbearable. In middle school, I started to control it a little bit better, still not as good as I should have, but it was definitely better.

What didn't help my situation in hating diabetes is that I was bullied for having diabetes. I was made fun of for having a disease that I had no control over. People would ask me how "shooting up" was or asked if they could buy drugs off me. They probably didn't mean to hurt me, but they didn't realize how bad that did hurt and how I wished I didn't have diabetes more than anything. I remember specifically someone asked me if I was "bigger" because I had diabetes. After that incident, I stopped taking my shots more often. I read somewhere that insulin makes you gain weight, so why would I want to take it? I hardly ever did my shots and I felt sick all the time. Not taking my shots did make me lose weight, but that was extremely unhealthy and very dangerous to my well-being. I dropped 32 pounds from 7th to 8th grade. I was so embarrassed of having diabetes I wouldn't take my shots in public or if I was around anyone who didn't already know I had diabetes. I tried as hard as I could to keep it a secret and to not share it with anyone. I ate whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, because I didn't care. I stopped caring about my health.

Where It Got Worse

On top of being made fun of for having diabetes, I had really bad self esteem issues for as long as I can remember. I've always been a chubbier kid and I was made fun of for it. there was days when I couldn't even look in a mirror because I hated how I looked. I fell into a depression and to this day it hasn't entirely gone away. I was depressed because I had a disease I hated and was tired of taking care of, I was depressed because I lost all my friends, I was depressed because I hated myself. this is when my diabetes was at its worst. My A1C level was 13.7 (A1C levels are an average of my blood sugars in a 3-month span. A good A1C level is 4.6-6.7). I just didn't care what happened to me. For some reason I thought if I didn't take care of my diabetes it would go away. I was sick a lot and I missed a lot of school my senior year because of it. I never took my shot in school because I was still embarrassed. Recently I was messing around on google, and I came across "diabulimia" and that's when you don't take proper insulin dosages, or any insulin at all for the purpose of losing weight. I learned all the dangers from it and how it can slowly shut down my organs. The strange thing about that is, it didn't scare me at all. I was never diagnosed with diabulimia, but you could pretty much say I had it. I ate anything I wanted because I knew it would help me lose weight and I would be "pretty". I knew that not taking insulin would make me lose weight, but I didn't exactly know how my body did that. I desperately wanted to be small. I wanted to be skinny. I wanted people to like me. I genuinely thought people would like me more if I were skinnier. I hated myself and I hated my body. I didn't take care of myself, mentally or physically.

My sophomore year in high school, I was walking to one of my classes and I noticed my heart beat was out of control. It was beating at 200 beats per minute and all I did was walk into school and up to one of my friends. That's definitely not normal. After first hour, I called my mom and she took me to the doctors. I did a bunch of tests and I had to get my blood drawn. When the results came back, they said I had an overactive thyroid (Graves Disease) and that's when my thyroid sends out too many hormones for my body to handle, which is what was causing my heart rate to be so fast. I got graves disease because I didn't take care of myself, and now my immune system was attacking my thyroid. After about a year, my thyroid got under control, which is called a recession period. a few months to a year after my thyroid was under control, it became overactive again. I went back to the doctors and they said the best option for me was to kill my thyroid with radioactive therapy to make it inactive so I wouldn't have any more problems with it.

In May 2014 I had the radioactive iodine therapy, and my thyroid is now inactive. I was technically radioactive so I couldn't be too close to people for a few days. It was strange. I couldn't use the same silverware as anyone for a week and I had to wash my clothes separately. Now I take thyroid hormone pills every day so my body still gets the hormones my thyroid would have gave out if it were active. If I took better care of my diabetes, I wouldn't have had this problem.

Where It Gets Better

Some of my friends don't even know I have diabetes. I don't mind that, I just get embarrassed sometimes. I really shouldn't though. I don't like taking shots in public or in front of people because I'm afraid they'll think I'm a freak or something. I always go into the bathroom to do my shots in public. I was telling one of my friends how I'm embarrassed to talk about my diabetes, and he told me, "Don't be. This is a part of your life forever. It only shows how strong you are." He's absolutely right. I'm trying my hardest not to mess up, but sometimes it happens. Sure, there's still days when I wish I wasn't a diabetic, and I think about how much easier things would be on not only me, but my family if I didn't have this disease. All my medication costs a lot per month, and it puts a strain on my family. I can't help but feel bad about it. I felt like I was "normal" by not taking care of myself, which sounds really stupid. I wanted so badly to be normal, and not have to inject myself with insulin every day. I would've done anything to make the bruises from my shots to go away. Through these past 16 difficult years, being diagnosed with diabetes showed me how strong I can be, and how strong I have to be every day. It's constantly a struggle, and constantly a pain, but I put up with it because I have to. I learned that if someone's going to think I'm a freak for having an auto-immune disease, then they aren't worth my time. The people who really love me will be there to help me and make me feel better when I'm down, which is exactly what the people in my life do now. Diabetes forced me to grow up at such a young age and become this huge person, who knew all the right things to do. Honestly, I don't know all the right things to do. I'm still learning, and until they find a cure, I'll continue to learn.

Now, in my fourth year of college, I'm doing okay. I don't always do what I need to, but I try my best. I still get sick from high blood sugar sometimes, I don't always check my blood sugar when I'm supposed to. I probably wouldn't be able to handle this if it weren't for my family, my student service center teacher, Mr. Cifaldi, or my friends. My brother was always there to remind me that I couldn't eat something, because I didn't have my shot. At the time I'd get so mad when he'd mention something, but now I realize that he's right. I couldn't eat that, I couldn't drink that. He was always on top of it. Cifaldi helped me by letting me go into his classroom to take my shot at lunch. he tried his best to understand my diabetes and where I was coming from with hating it. Even when I go to visit him years after I had him as a teacher, he always makes sure I'm doing okay with my diabetes and I'm doing what I need to. My friends try their best to understand everything that is involved with being diabetic. They try to understand what it means to have low blood sugar, what it means to have high blood sugar, when I need to take insulin, how much insulin I need. They do the best they can. I appreciate them worrying about me if I go low in public, or understanding that I need to take insulin. I appreciate them making me feel less alien when I have to occasionally stab myself in public. I have all the support in the world and I truthfully don't think I would be here working at this as hard as I am without all of my supporters.