I wrote this paper for an English assignment. :)
Diabetes Sucks
Halle Berry, “Boomer” Wells, Randy Jackson, Jay Cutler, Ella Fitzgerald, Thomas Edison, James Brown, Nick Jonas, Aretha Franklin, Nicole Martin. What do all these awesome people have in common? They have all been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.
It happened on February 28, 2008. Everything I had always taken for granted was taken away. My perfect health became a thing of the past. Prior to my diagnosis I began losing weight and drinking excess amounts of water. I was always tired and sick. My mom, being a diabetic expert because of my youngest brother’s diabetes, became suspicious of my symptoms and decided to test my blood glucose levels. The meter read ‘HI’. This means I had over 35 mill moles of sugar in every liter of my blood. The average range is between 5 and 7 mill moles of sugar per liter. The actual day of my diagnosis my stomach was upset, my head was pounding, and I was uncharacteristically cranky. My mom tested my blood again, and it still read ‘HI’, so she took me up to the hospital, where they ran some quick blood tests, then treated me with my first insulin shot. The effects were immediate. My whole body relaxed and I slept for the first time in days. The next day I got my very own set of insulin pens, glucagon, and a blood glucose meter.
Diabetes is a disease where the pancreas does not produce insulin. Insulin is a hormone that turns sugar into glucose. The body uses glucose, not sugar for energy. Without insulin, sugar builds up in the blood stream, and causes blood sugar levels to rise. If the body reaches a point where there is no more room for sugar in the blood stream, the situation is desperate. Blood can become acidic, slowly eating away at the edges of the blood vessels. This is called key tones. Someone with key tones is always exhausted, and loses weight very quickly.
Some of the side effects of diabetes are immediate, including paranoia, and tender spots on fingers, stomach, and arms. Some side effects are delayed, such as denial. I still try to deny my diabetic status by justifying with, “Oh, one unit of insulin isn’t worth the poke, and it won’t make a difference with my sugars.” Or, worse, I try to avoid the inevitable by not checking my sugars. By avoiding this I don’t know if I’m having the right amount of insulin. If I don’t have enough it can be life threatening, and if I have too much it can be life threatening. The denial of diabetes is life threatening.
I have had to change a lot of things in my life over the past year. I don’t go for slurpee runs every afternoon in the summer, and I don’t drink a Dr. Pepper a day like I used to. I’m supposed to test my blood sugar before every meal, and throughout the day if I’m eating anything. I have a shot of insulin after every meal, and before bed every night. I have to eat balanced meals, because the insulin I use works the best when there’s protein in the bloodstream with it, and if I didn’t have any carbohydrates I’d go low, which is the very worst feeling of all.
There are roughly 3 million people in the USA alone that have Type 1 Diabetes. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not a fat person disease. Lots of it is genetics. My brother’s was triggered by an ear infection that somehow worked its way down to his pancreas and started attacking it. Mine just happened. Diabetes is a life long disease. Insulin is not a cure; it’s a temporary fix. We’re still waiting on a cure. We’ll keep pricking, poking, and bleeding until a cure is found.
It's not disease.. It's a way of life you're fortunate to not have to life.
Wow
I tried normal.
Normal didn't work for me.
wow good or wow bad?
Nicole I love it. Thanks for sharing this with us. Don't change a thing!
Dxd November 25, 2000, Minimed Med Pump and CGM
Find me on twitter, my blog, linked in
Definitely wow good. Keep writing, I enjoyed reading this one. :)
very nice...looks like your 1 year diagnosis is coming up soon?
hey this reminds me of the speach i gave yesterday. good work.
Who knew life could be this interesting.
it is! on saturday! hopefully in ''celebration'' of it i'll be getting a pump!!
Very good overview and personal history. There are a lot of people out there who don't know what diabetes is all about. I hope you are doing well on your first anniversary. I passed my 25th last year.
By the way, it's spelled ketones. :)
Type I since 1983
Minimed pumper since 2001
good job! i didn't know all those people had type 1, that was interesting.
Living life as it comes...
this is really good. but Randy Jackson doesn't have type 1 diabetes. he has type 2. i just thought you might wanna know....
i still really liked your paper though(:
oops.. ha ha. the website i saw said he had t1. oh well!
Thomas Edison?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!??!?!!!!?!?!?
No disrespect.
"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
--William Shakespeare
"… are you just making up words again, like 'morbid obesity' or 'adult-onset diabetes?'"--Drawn Together
As a mother of a T1 diabetic for only the past 3 years I am still learning about it and trying to imagine what is must be like. My son is 25 now and suffers daily with it. He has completely changed from an easy going guy to a really angry person. You say that when you are having a high blood sugar you get paranoid. I have noticed that his moods swing back and forth like a clock's pendulum. I never know how what kind of mood he is in. He seems like he gets paranoid a lot. Is this a normal reaction to high blood sugars. I am just looking for some input on what it actually feels like. Can anyone respond with their symptoms. This is a very well written assignment and helps me understand what it must be like. Thanks for any input you can give.
a lot of my simptoms personally is that i get really paraniod and moody. i snap at my friends all the time and yell for the stupidist reasons. my eyes always hurt when im high, i get a headache and i get sleepy. i drink A LOT of water and i dont normally drink a lot of liquids.
im not sure if that was what you were really asking but i hope its helpsss!