That's the Power of Blog

Today's prompt from the HAWMC is to complete this sentence:

I write about my health because…

I write about my health because I didn't know that there were people out there like me. And because there is a freedom that comes with sharing what I've kept bottled up inside since childhood about living with this condition.

I spent the first EIGHTEEN YEARS that I was living with type 1 diabetes honestly believing that I was the ONLY ONE who must not have normal glucose control.

My endocrinologists and CDEs and dietitians had always made it sound so simple: Test now, eat this, treat with this, inject with this.

And they always seemed so sincerely surprised at my failed attempts: Why were you low? Why would you eat that? Where are your logs? Your A1c is 15%. We'd like to see that come down. (To what? How do I do that? What does that even mean?)

I thought that MY diabetes must not be controllable, so I half-heartedly continued the regimen, but completely gave up on achieving good numbers. I listened to their sermons and filed them away as useless. They labeled me non-compliant and I resented the hell out of them for it. Comply with what? Bad advice?

I focused instead on anything BUT the diabetes. I graduated at the top of my class...with an A1c over 10%. I sang my first opera...with my BGs in the 360s. I had never seen an A1c below 8% and I didn't even know that they could go that low. I didn't know or care that T1D was an autoimmune illness; I was told I probably got it from a fall that must have injured my pancreas.

I write - but oh, I want to scream.

I want to run back in time in the Diabetes Delorean and tell the 10-year-old me everything I've learned in the last 3 years that I've been connected.

Connected.

I want to tell her that she needs to go to camp and meet at least one other person with diabetes. That she shouldn't be afraid of the insulin pump when the time comes. That she should test her blood sugar more often, eat differently, dose differently.

But most importantly, I want to tell that independent, headstrong adolescent that she will need a support network beyond her loving parents. She will need to meet others who have actually lived the same story.

But I can't tell her that. I can only tell you.

And maybe you needed to hear it.