For Kycie, David, and all the other kids who didn't make it.

I could have been them. Taken from this earth far too young, before I'd even hit double-digits in age.

I can only remember bits and pieces of the day I was diagnosed. I'm not even sure what the exact day was, but it was in July of 1990. I couldn't breathe. My mom and dad rushed me to my pediatrician right away, where I started throwing up bile. I remember being hurried from the pediatrician's office to the hospital, right across the street. I can recall being a little scared, and a lot uncomfortable.

I was eight years old. All I knew was that I wanted someone to fix me, and the whole thing felt very surreal. I learned I was in something called diabetic ketoacidosis. (Maybe it was all the Sesame Street I watched when I was even smaller, but I first thought they were saying something that sounded like Spanish: quequitoacidosis. Pretty sure that is not a thing.)

Yet, it's what I found out later in life that rings true to this day, and brings pain to the hearts and minds of parents, caregivers and healthcare workers alike. Diabetes wasn't anyone's first thought when I first got sick. 

My pediatrician was deeply bothered by the fact that he missed it--my mom had talked to him a couple of weeks before about how I seemed to have the flu in the summertime. Some nasty virus was spreading around kids that summer, so nobody really thought anything of it. It was unusually warm, and I spent a lot of time outside at Girl Scout day camp, so no wonder I was drinking all the time, right?

So there I was, in the hospital, sicker than I'd ever been. Knock on wood, I will never end up that sick again.

Twenty-five years ago, I was one of the lucky kids. Even today, with all the technology we didn't yet have when I was growing up, not all kids are so lucky. What a bittersweet way to realize it's my diaversary.

Don't ever hesitate to ask for a glucose test for your kids. 

19 Years.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks, I suspect it was July 7th, or maybe the 9th, was the anniversary of my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes. The thing is, I don't recall the exact day of the year. I get shy about asking. I don't like upsetting my mother because I know, like me, she can't just tell me a date. There will be a story that goes along with it. There may be tears. There may also be a, "It's been almost 20 years and you still don't check your sugar often enough!" lecture. I like to avoid those.

*Cue the flashback harp music and wavy screen dissolve effects*

It was 1990, and I was 8 years old, looking forward to 3rd grade. I remember it was a Saturday morning, and that my grandparents were going to be leaving for a fishing trip to Canada that day. I'd spent all spring and summer drinking and drinking and drinking whatever I could get my hands on, had cravings for sugar, spent a lot of time going to the bathroom, but nobody thought anything of it. This particular morning, I get up, feeling a little odd. I charge down the hallway of the house, then realize I'm out of breath. My heart is pounding. I recall thinking it definitely wasn't normal.

My dad was in the kitchen. He noticed something was odd, mentioned that I was breathing awfully fast. I insisted that I was fine (heh, something I will still do to this day when I feel mildly bothered by my health or randomly hurting body parts or what have you). I told him I had just run down the hallway, that's all. But things got worse. I remember being scared. I remember my back hurting very badly, not wanting to stand up.

After that, things get fuzzy. I remember being at my pediatrician's office, throwing up green stuff in a stainless steel pan that was kidney-shaped. I vaguely remember being wheeled up from the ER. I remember lying on a table, staring at the speckled ceiling tiles as a doctor and some nurses cut down on my ankle to force an IV into my collapsing veins. After that, things get fuzzier. I still have the scar. You can go here and check it out, or squint at my ankle in an attempt to check it out. I think it's more prominent to me than to anyone else.

I don't want to dwell on my diagnosis story. It feels like such a tiny, almost insignificant part of the life I've lived with diabetes so far, and it's so far from the life I live now. I was a little girl, scared, yes, but also strong as hell. I remember feeling angry because my mother was crying by my bedside when I knew in my heart that I was going to be just fine. I was going to be my regular old self, just that self now needed to be given shots, and probably would never eat candy ever again.

"None at all?" I remember asking.
"It's very bad for you," my mom said.
"Not even a couple of M&M's? Or a Skittle?"
"Hannie Ellen, things are going to be very different from now on."

And they were. 19 years later, I don't always have the control I want. I don't always have my life perfectly in order. Yet I am still strong against this disease; I am still fighting it. I am hoping this year to continue the improvements I've started to make in years past.

Kelly also suggested that since I didn't know my actual diagnosis date, I needed to have a festival to celebrate, and I should celebrate with some bolus-worthy treat every day in the weeks around when I suspect my diagnosis occurred. So in the past couple of weeks, I've enjoyed some delicious beers, water ice, my favorite pizza, a Frosty, sweet potato fries and other bits of amazing food.

I'm the happiest I've been, personally, in a very long time. It seems like a great time for some positive change for once. I'm looking forward to returning to blogging more often to document it all.

Quiet Things That No One Knows

You wouldn't know about it just to look at me. On the surface, I'm a bubbly, perky, frequently sarcastic 20-something writer. I like bright colors. I like performing my poetry for people. I like listening to indie rock, punk, and a zillion other kinds of music. I love movies. I drive a Saturn. I have a great husband, and I still sometimes develop a crush on every other guy I meet.

Some people have been surprised to find out that I have diabetes. Others have known it all along, like my friends whose parents began stocking diet sodas and low-sugar snacks, knowing I'd be coming to hang out with their kid, wanting me to just feel normal, happy and welcomed.

Sometimes, it gets tiresome having to explain to various folks what kind of diabetes I actually have, trying to sum up how I take care of myself in a one-and-a-half minute statement, but I still don't mind telling my friends. They occasionally apologize for prying, or for asking too many questions, but I am always happy to know that the people I'm closest to really care about me. They care enough to know what it is I have to go through every day. They want to know what to do if there's an emergency, because usually, the only diabetes most people know about, at least in my personal experience, is a relative's Type 2. They are surprised and intrigued to know how Type 1 is so much different.

No, I can't be cured by eating cinnamon-coated broccoli. No, I can't be cured by losing weight and exercising, but that never hurts. And really, no diabetic can ever be fully "cured" anyway, at least not now. Drugs won't make my pancreas work. I'm a different breed.

I'd never heard of diabetes when I was diagnosed in 1990. I was 8 years old, less than two months from starting 3rd grade. I don't really remember much about my diagnosis. I know I was horribly sick, in full-blown DKA, and my veins were collapsed so they had to put my IV in by making an incision in my ankle. I still have the one-inch scar there to prove it. I remember everyone sending me balloons and get-well-soon gifts. I remember receiving stuffed animals, a snow globe, sets of markers to color with. I remember being woken up constantly for a nurse to take some blood or give me a finger stick--some of the nurses had worked with my aunt or my grandmother in the past, and would chat with me, while others would just tell me what a brave little solider I was. I remember spending one morning hyperventilating because something was wrong with my potassium levels, and how scared I was at that moment, because no one seemed to be able to explain to me what was going on.

I think that lack of understanding was the most frustrating part of my diagnosis. There are two distinct memories I have from that time. One was being pushed in my wheelchair up and down a set of ramps downstairs at the hospital, which I thought was just the most fun thing I could possibly do. The other, was one day, my mom was sitting at my bedside, and I just remember her crying and crying. I said to her, thinking I was so sage in my 8-year-old wisdom, "Mom, I'm still here. You're crying like somebody died."

She misheard me, and responded, with even MORE tears in her eyes, "No, honey, you're not going to die."

I realized now that I cannot even begin to imagine what my Mom was going through then. I was young enough and bright enough that it was easy for me to accept my diagnosis: you have diabetes, you're going to do all these strange, foreign and sometimes painful things if you want to feel good, be healthy, and live a long life. I was sold, and I knew I was lucky. I was fortunate enough to have a condition that would allow me to keep living, just so long as I took care of myself. I was frustrated one day because an older person asked me if I had "the sugar". What the? was all I could think. I became quickly acquainted with the concepts of forbidden foods, and I could read a food label faster than any other elementary school kid that I knew. I knew, even at an early age, that most people didn't understand diabetes very well. When you were young, at least back then, most people were correct to assume that you needed shots.

My doubts, anger and frustration with my own diabetes didn't come until much later, and I am still dealing with them now. They are the reasons why I took a chance on a different company's insulin pump. They are the reasons why I sought out the services of a really great, proactive CDE. They are sometimes the reasons why I need to take anti-depressants. Now that I'm older, I realize how frustrating explaining one's diabetes can be, especially when type 2 gets all the publicity, and the type 1 publicity features lots of cute little kids, because let's face it, it's the combo of their adorable mugs and their grown-up bravery that draws the donations.

I don't want diabetes to always be a part of my life. I don't want it to have to be a part of anyone's life. I know how to live with it, but I want to know what it's like to live without it as an adult. I remember a few short years of my life without checking my glucose, or having an endocrinologist, or taking insulin, but I don't always count on those things ever happening. I want to see a cure, or at least a closed-loop system in my lifetime.

My name is Hannah. I have type 1 diabetes, and I want others out there to know that it's not always easy. That's why I write this blog--to share all aspects of my life with diabetes, to know that I'm not alone by sharing in a community, and to give hope to those anonymous lurker parents and kids out there. We can live really great, healthy lives with Type 1 Diabetes.

We are all just waiting for the day when we can simply live great, healthy lives.