This is a long one, so get ready for the ride.

In the 16 years that I have been diabetic, I have never taken the time to sit down and publicly tell my story. Some of my articles and Facebook statuses have mentioned my diabetes before, small tidbits and side stories of course. However, I never told the story from start to finish. Perhaps it was because I thought no one cared to hear. Or, I was scared because I was ashamed of how I handled the first 13-14 years of the disease. It is also possible that I just never knew how to tell the story because every day is so complex in the way I have to deal with it and what I’ve been through, how could I describe all of that in one article? Whatever the reason may be, I came to realize that if this story could help even one person, that would be more than enough of a reason to tell it.

At the age of 5, my parents noticed something was off with my behavior. I was constantly sleeping in class, I was always thirsty, I was extremely skinny and there were umpteen other problems. They couldn’t figure out what was happening, but they figured something was mentally wrong with me and wanted to get me help as soon as they could. They went to my kindergarten teacher and asked if she has recommendations for a psychologist. She told them that though a psychologist might be a good idea, they should take me to my normal pediatrician first so they could rule out any physical complications.

That was a day I will never forget. I sat in my doctors office waiting for her to see my blood sugar results. I didn’t know what was going on. In my head, I was just at another routine check-up. Boy, was I wrong. My doctor, the kindest lady whom to this day has made me feel nothing but comfortable in dealing with this disease, came back to the room and told me that I needed to head to the hospital immediately. I cried and begged my mom not to make me go. Nonetheless, I surrendered.

We waited for what felt like hours in the hospital waiting room to finally be taken into a room. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I had yet to be told that I was diabetic. I had yet to be told that my life was about to turned around. I didn’t know what was ahead of me. Though I remember the terror and confusion that I felt that day, I don’t remember many details.

The first few months were all about learning how to manage the disease. Heck, every day is about learning how to manage the disease. Fast forward a few months to a trip to Florida with my family. The night was like any other. I was staying in my grandparents condo in Fort Lauderdale, watching TV and eating a giant bag of blueberries. I was joking around with my siblings and couldn’t have been any happier to be where I was. I went to bed that night and to this day I have a very vivid flash of memory of practically dangling off the bed throwing up. I blacked out after that. The next thing I know I’m being pulled out of the car and into the emergency room at the hospital in Florida. That was the first of 9 seizures I endured.

I will never forget, regret, or be more ashamed of myself for how I handled my diabetes growing up. Specifically, second grade. When needed, I would go to the back of the classroom to take my insulin shots so that no one could see. The thing is, however, I wasn’t taking my shots. I was pretending to. I would take the needle and keep the cap on, bend over like I was injecting it into my stomach and push the insulin straight into the cap of the needle. At the time, I was a scared kid. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want to take shots, and sure, 21 year-old me says to just suck it up so you don’t feel sick. But, it wasn’t that easy. I constantly lied to everyone about what my blood sugar was and “forgot” my monitor at home when my doctors asked to see it.

The 4th grade came around and boy, that was a rollercoaster. At the time, I still had to sleep by my mom because of how often I was having seizures (all during the night). One morning at 4 am I woke up and had an excruciating pain in my left arm. I was nauseous and was beyond certain that something was wrong. I woke my mom up and told her that she needed to take me to a hospital. To this day, it still amazes me that a 9 year-old was easily willing and practically begging to be taken to the hospital. After calling the endocrinologist (diabetes doctor) on call, we headed straight to the emergency room. Long story short, I had DKA (also known as ketoacidosis). DKA happens when you have extremely high blood sugar for far too long. Often, people are in DKA when they are diagnosed because they didn’t know they were diabetic and had no way of keeping their blood sugar down. At the time, I was on an insulin pump and it had failed without alerting me, causing me to go into DKA. To say that I was traumatized by the pump system for the following 10 years is saying the least.

Throughout high school and middle school, I didn’t care about my blood sugar. I didn’t eat how I was supposed to, I didn’t take the correct amounts of insulin, I didn’t take the insulin when I was supposed to, and I would even forget to take insulin. If there is one thing that I regret most, it is not taking care of my blood sugar growing up because now, as a 21 year old, I am paying for it worse than I could have had to. Luckily, no trips to the hospital were taken after the 4th grade (knock on wood).

Jumping to more recently, college. For the first two years of college, I was at community college. During my first quarter there, I was having a lot of anxiety about my blood sugar and at one point, had a panic attack in the middle of class and ran out. I did not return to school that quarter. Instead, I finally decided that it was time to get back on an insulin pump and have a continuous glucose monitor so that I wouldn’t be in such a constant state of fear. It took me a couple of months to really know how to use the pump and be comfortable with it again. To this day, I still have the fear that it will fail on me like my last one did in 4th grade. I do, however, have faith that technology has improved in those 10 years!

This past year, I made the executive decision to move across the country for college. Michigan. The place that I am now lucky enough to call home. I don’t know what it is there, but my blood sugar has never been in the kind of control that it is in when I am there. I am healthy, I have less anxiety about blood sugar while I am there, and for once in my life I feel a sense of control.

To give a little bit of context, A1c is how you monitor long-term glucose control. It covers 3-month long periods. An A1c of below a 7 is considered good for a diabetic. All throughout elementary through high school, my A1c was anywhere between a 10 to 12. It was absolutely horrible. Eventually, it started getting better when I got into better control. Yesterday, I went to my endocrinologist and was told that my A1c is at a 6.6! That is the lowest that it has ever been. It just goes to show that there is never a reason, not even moving far away from home, to stop fighting for your health.

This journey is far from over. I will always strive to improve my health. Thank you for reading through the rollercoaster of a life that I live. Awareness of type 1 diabetes is beyond important, and I will never stop hoping for a cure.