I stare back at my reflection in the bathroom vanity as I pierce the needle through the rubber top of the glass vial. I push the plunger in and slowly pull it back out as the translucent liquid comes flooding into the cartridge. As I flick the plastic sides to release air bubbles, a dribble of liquid comes out and splashes on my hand. The cringe-worthy odor wafts up to my nose. However unpleasant this smell may be, to me it is the smell of life and has been for the past decade.
These are the opening five sentences of my college admissions essay. I remember thinking after I read this passage out loud to my dad that college admissions panels would probably think that they were reading the admissions essay of a drug addict.
Thankfully, I followed those five sentences up with this one:
The liquid I am drawing into the cartridge is insulin, the hormone that should be flowing through my blood stream, but instead enters into my body through a tube and is stored in a pink insulin pump rather than my pancreas.
I am not a drug addict. But I am a type one diabetic. Although I will say a commonly cracked joke amongst diabetics is “Insulin is the only drug you take if you don’t want to get high. High blood sugar that is.” All jokes aside, type one diabetes is a disease that is often misconceived and easily confused, just as someone could have confused the opening of my college essay for someone doing drugs.
People make their presumptions of the disease from what they see on the surface.
Ew. Needles.
Yes. Needles. And lots of them. Once you prick your finger with one 8-12 times a day, the gross factor diminishes, especially since there will be another jolt from one in 2-3 days when I put on a new infusion site for my insulin pump and a third for me comes when I plunge a sensor for my Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) under my skin.
Why do you have so many fruit snacks?
Being a treat most leave behind in childhood, people may be astonished when they see fruit snacks all over the place: in my room, in my backpack, in my purse. However, for me, the novelty of these pouches quickly wear off when I feel shaky, sweaty, or just plain exhausted when I am eating them to raise my blood sugar so as to not pass out. Plus, after eating two or three in a row you get sick of them pretty fast.
Can you eat that?
Yes, whatever you may be pointing to in your head, I can eat. Ice cream (I scooped for Ben and Jerry’s this summer after all), a piece of cake, a Frappuccino. People make the presumption that because a type one diabetic’s blood sugar does run higher than someone who doesn’t have the disease that this means they can’t have sweets. I will be the first to tell you that type one diabetics can have sweets, as I have a very large sweet tooth myself.
This disease is about controlling your blood sugar and doing so with insulin. So I am manually controlling my blood sugar just as your body is doing it automatically.
What is that?
No, I am not super cool and retro and have a Walkman. It may make noise, but it’s not a cellphone. It’s also not a hospital pager. The pink thing on my waistband with translucent tubing, that is my robotic pancreas. It’s my insulin pump. It holds insulin, gives insulin, calculates how much insulin to give me. In my opinion, it’s pretty awesome because it is very much keeping me alive.
The gray rectangular bump that occasionally makes an appearance on my arm? That’s my CGM. It updates me every five minutes on what my blood sugar is and where it is heading. Oh yeah, it communicates with Bluetooth so I can see those numbers with a quick glance to my phone and my parents can see it too.
I will wear this CGM on my arm because I am proud of it. I am fine with people asking about it because I am proud to represent what you can do with this disease and prove to people that being diagnosed with type one diabetes does not have to limit you.
Plus, it kind of makes me look cool too because after all, I am half robotic.
These things, however, are just the most obvious, outward signs of living with type one diabetes. These are the things most commonly asked about, but not the full truth.
The full truth is that living with type one diabetes, a chronic, autoimmune disease who’s cure has not yet been found, sucks.
Every day is a battle. At the end of some days you can sit back and do your happy dance because you had the better day against type one diabetes. But other days you will want to crumble because no matter what you did the blood sugar reading staring back at you was always too high or too low.
I have lived with this disease since I was 7. At this point I cannot remember what it is like to live a life that does not include finger pricks, counting carbohydrates, and giving insulin. However, it has not been until the past couple of years where I have felt as if I can let the veil of positivity I have towards living with this disease lift. I would always shrug off dealing with this because there could be something worse to deal with.
But transitioning to college and writing my college essay gave me the time to reflect that it is hard, it’s grueling, it’s taxing, it’s frustrating, and it’s not fun to live with this weight on my shoulder’s every day.
In the past week, I have only slept through the night once because my CGM alerted me that my blood sugar was low, and I had to then stay up for a half hour eating fruit snacks and waiting for my blood sugar to be at a safe enough level before I could fall asleep again. When I am at a party, you won’t find me tossing back the drinks. I must think about how the alcohol make affect my blood sugar in the next couple of hours and be capable of treating that blood sugar.
I can’t just roll out of bed and head to a work out class. I have to wake up an hour or so before hand to make sure I eat something that will keep my blood sugar stable while I exercise and not go too low.
These things are all most people take for granted. For me, I no longer do so. I celebrate having a full night’s sleep and not having to deal with the aftermath of a blood sugar roller coaster after I exercise.
So, as you can see, this disease goes much deeper than the surface level things you can see. It’s tough, it’s a battle, and right now technology will make things easier, but there is no cure in sight. This is my reality, and it’s a reality I am at peace with, but peace always comes with some tension that you must battle through to keep it.
Ask me about my disease, but please never assume things about it.
