I sat in the padded chair at the medical facility and propped my left arm palm-up onto the armrest. The nurse came in and greeted me with a calming voice and a smile. As she was about to draw my blood, she looked at me and asked if I was afraid of needles. “No,” I replied. “I have to stab myself like 10 times a day.” The look on her face was priceless, as it always is when I tell someone such a thing.
What I really meant to tell the nurse was that I have type 1 diabetes and I’m used to taking daily insulin injections and pricking my fingers around the clock to test my blood sugar. It’s an illness I’ve been living with since 2012, and to put it frankly, the journey has been anything but smooth.
Picture this: you’re trying to get through a complicated maze. You take the day to learn the maze and methodically plan your escape route. Exhausted, you finally reach the other side. Now, the only way home is back through it, which you’re confident will be a breeze since you spent all day studying the route. But the next morning, you discover that the maze has somehow entirely changed, and now you have to start from square one to find your way back home. That is what managing diabetes can feel like from one day to the next: Just ask any one of the 422 million people around the globe who live with some form of the disease.
After I was diagnosed at age 13, I spent several years in complete denial. I would pretty much go about my day as if I was anybody else, as if my pancreas was actually functioning, as if my blood sugar wasn’t hanging out in the 200s, as if this chronic illness that could be slowly killing me did not exist at all. If the disease goes unmanaged, it can lead to major health complications, including cardiovascular disease, nerve damage, eye or foot problems, kidney disease, and many more. It took a few scary wake-up calls for me to realize that the longer I denied my body of the respect and attention it deserved, the further away from a healthy and fulfilling life I would stray. Type 1 diabetes wasn’t going anywhere, so I might as well learn to live with it.
Just like our bodies and surroundings are constantly in limbo, so are our blood sugar levels and insulin needs. Insulin dosage and blood sugar trends change through the stages of one’s life, but they also change day to day. There are few things that don’t impact blood sugar; food, water intake, temperature, physical activity, stress, adrenaline, illness, menstruation, sleep, and about a thousand other factors can all affect blood sugar levels. I’ve had to learn to be incredibly flexible and patient with my body, as well as in-tune with what it’s telling me.
One of the reasons it took me so long to come to terms with my disease is that, in some ways, it’s out of my control. As a perfectionist in many areas of my life, not being able to “master” my diabetes management is something I found incredibly frustrating. It’s discouraging when you do everything right, follow all the rules, eat all the right foods, exercise consistently, and then you sit down to test your blood sugar before dinnertime, and the number is as high as if you just wolfed down an entire cake.
Other times, I have days where my numbers stay entirely in range, and I can’t help but feel proud and grateful for my body and the medication that’s able to keep it running. After all, if I had been born before the birth of insulin in 1921, I probably wouldn’t have made it to my 20s. It’s in those moments when I remember that hope and gratitude can come from every one of life’s challenges (even those that are lifelong).
Chronic illness isn’t supposed to be easy; it’s a daily guessing game; a loop-filled rollercoaster; a road trip without a GPS. Diabetes has made me cry, laugh, learn, grow, reflect, and transform into the strong and determined woman I am today. And, if nothing else, at least I’ll always be cool with needles.