Well, the years seems to be going awful fast but I guess it is August and therefore my 55’th year with Type 1. I was 11 and the worst part for me was seven days in a boring hospital until they got me figured out and let me go home. And maybe, the fact that they drew blood about every six hours. That wasn’t too cool either!
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I feel for you, I was diagnosed at 4 years of age in the 70’s and they held my little arms and legs down to take blood from me, I squirm now even as an adult when going to have bloods taken, and as you would know the needles back then were pretty rough!
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Congratulations to both of you. Juvenile Diabetes was really juvenile for you. Long time!
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54 years for me this summer, diagnosed in 1971 at age 13. I spent almost 3 weeks in hospital then. We’ve lived through so many changes in those years. I remember checking my sugar by using a dropper to add urine to a test tube and adding some tablet, then matching the colour against a chart. Now I glance at my watch and see the results from my CGM.
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I hid in my Mom’s car and came out screaming and that was just for the diagnosis! At the lab!
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Thank you!
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I was so bored they sent me to Occupational Therapy and I learned how to do weaving. They also had me help pour water for other children on the floor.
67 years for me. I almost died before my pediatrician tested my blood. Not that many people were diabetic back then.. They only kept me hospitalized for 3 days. I was 8 and I remember very little about the experience. I now realize that my parents and I did not get enough training. I didn’t start giving my own shots until I was much older. I do remember that the shots really hurt. Now I give at least 3 to 5 shots a day and I find it so easy with sharper needles.
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I salute all those who were diagnosed in their childhood or adolescence. I wasn’t forced to deal with diabetes until age 30. Adjusting to the never-ending list of social, emotional, and metabolic demands is huge, especially for a young person.
Looking back at my life I can see that I likely would have done poorly with this challenge if I was diagnosed in my childhood. I had a rebellious streak and was very attached to a bad diet. Forced to accept this drastic change to my daily life, I fear I would have been long in denial and rebelling at all the new requirements coming at me.
Of course, I’ll never know what would have happened, but I admire all of the attempts to deal with a drastic change. My hat is off to all of you and your parents!
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I made my Dad give me shots until maybe high school. Practicing on an orange in the hospital did no good for me!
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The orange did nothing for me either. Yep, mom and dad gave me my shots until about high school. I remember biting my pillow to get through the pain of the large needles.
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Cheers to you, my friends. Diagnosed at 12 in 1968. It all sounds very familiar.
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Diagnosed with type 1 when I was twenty. Told if I looked after myself, I could live to be 42. I decided that if that was all I could look forward to, I was going to enjoy myself. Seems ro have worked as I just had my 85th birthday.
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Yay for you!!! Blessings and continued healthy life!!!
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You never know how you would’ve been without it, but I was diagnosed at 10, 38 years ago next month, and I always think it helped me to have self control when it came to my diet, maybe its easier to get it younger than when you’ ve got habits in place that you have to get out of when youre older… I say this as i was 10- i feel for those parents who have to manage diabetes in those much younger.
Maybe I would’ve been the same without diabetes. Who knows? I mean I certainly had my times of poor control especially around 17 and 18, drinking too much and not looking after myself, but on the whole I haven’t been too wild with food or booze in the grand scheme.
I tell you what, I’m so pleased I’ve got to experience all of these leaps in technology. What a time to be alive in that respect!
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Diagnosed at 4 so 48 years W type one, first memories of life are mostly being tormented while being diagnosed. 
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I am going on my 56th year. September 1969. My roommate at White Plains Hospital was a gal with an ingrown toenail. I too am happy 1) to know so many other people who have lived a long time and are doing well. I was told if I didn’t shape up I would go blind or become crippled. (That certainly was motivating – NOT). Here I am all these years later, neither blind nor crippled with mild retinopathy and neuropathy. Last A1c was 5.9. If you are given the right tools and you have time to take care of yourself, you can get good results. I am grateful for the technology and for the greater understanding of what affects blood sugar. Glad you all are here and congratulations on 55 years Laura.
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Diagnosed at age 6 during National Diabetes Week in 1957. I was hospitalized to begin insulin injections (yes, practicing injections in an orange!) and other care needs. My mother stayed with me. No one told her anything about hypoglycemia during that “training” period. (at that time, insulins reacted within time frames based on the time of the day’s first injection and dictated when you ate. Yes, it was a nightmare.) Supposedly had a life expectancy of 12 years. I will mark 68 years as a T1D soon. Have seen a LOT of changes in care since my diagnosis. Despite a doctor telling me to consider “not having children”, I gave birth to 3 (all healthy!). Still have one of the glass syringes from my early years. My father worked rotating shifts, so my care rested on my mother’s shoulders. I was privileged to be her caregiver in her dementia journey. Myriads of changes in diabetes management in 68 years! Being able to connect with others on the same journey on this site is wonderful: a compassionate, empathetic, supportive, knowledgeable and helpful group of people!
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What I’m most disappointed at with all these years of diabetes for us all is that we’ve literally gone from glass syringes and needles you had to sharpen and autoclave, now to AID systems and I find it horrible it’s still only very few us using any type of learning algorithms with our diabetes! It’s the future is not just good control but awesome control that in many cases you can just let it do its thing while you do other things like sleeping for a start. AID systems be it you compile the code yourself and run it or use good proprietary systems like CamAPS and even many of the POD systems are just not being used by enough people, many which don’t even realise this is available!! I talk to diabetics and normal people all the time and it’s terrible no one knows how great the tech has become and will become, both open sourced and proprietary corporate systems, these should be available to everyone. First we went from pumps that could predict, and predict pretty poorly if you were to go low, then they could predict highs, but again pretty average but this got better over time now we have jumped forward to where the system LEARNS about you, on the hour, on the day and it looks backward and ads a weight to what it thinks you glucose will do: in the first few weeks I saw the algorithm give insulin in response to a CGM value, it was reactionary, but after about a month I watched, and it was like it could read the future I would see it gives insulin and think but I’m borderline low, then 15 minutes would go by and I’d see the blood glucose start to rise! I couldn’t believe it, it was predicting with almost 100% accuracy where my sugar would be, it’s was like watching a soothsayer!! In any case, if anyone reading this gets the opportunity to use closed loop gear then absolutely do it.
Gee I had to laugh at your post Lynn, my mother when I got first diagnosed got me to first inject an orange also, then she said since I’ll be giving you lots of needles I’ll let you try it on me! I wonder what it was with the oranges, maybe they thought the orange skin has sort of like sweat pores on our skin, I don’t know but for two mother’s to choose oranges doesn’t seem so random now you’ve said it as well?