Hi everyone ! My name is Alice, I’m 16, and I’ve been diagnosed Type 1 a few weeks ago. I’m really happy to have found this website, as things have been pretty overwhelming these days for me! I look forward to contributing in any way I can to the community. I’ve decided to take my diagnosis as an opportunity to improve my diet and lifestyle in general ( gonna try picking up exercise again, ugh !! wish me luck) so I’ll greatly appreciate any advice or conversations we can exchange !
( also please keep in mind english isn’t my first language ( don’t hesitate to speak french to me tho haha ))
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Welcome, @AliceDownTheHole!
You’ve got a fantastic attitude for someone newly diagnosed! Brava!
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Welcome Alice. Agreed with Lorraine’s comment about attitude. Keep it up and it will serve you well as you grow with this thing called T1D. Own it! don’t be a victim and you will be a better person for it.
…and, English is my 1st language and I still stumble with it 
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Welcome Alice! Discovering this site was a game changer for me!!! I was diagnosed with T1D in 2016. I encourage you to get/read “think like a pancreas” and “sugar surfing”. Both books are amazing and are great resources. Hope you are adjusting to your “new normal”. If you need anything feel free to reach out!
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Welcome. My daughter is 16 and diagnosed 5 years ago. Agreed, your attitude is great. You’re wise for your years to take the bull by the horns, learn all you can and accept what we can’t change and make the best of it.
Are you Canadian?
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Welcome to TuD, @AliceDownTheHole! Attitude can make a big difference since T1D plays out over an entire lifetime. You may feel overwhelmed now and that is understandable. Keep up with learning a little more each day and you will be amazed at how much you learn over the next year.
Diabetes treatments are now in a period of relatively rapid change. Many great tools are currently available for people with diabetes. I encourage you to give strong consideration to using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). I believe it is the best way for you to learn how your glucose metabolism works.
If you pay attention and are willing to try different tactics as a personal experiment, you will benefit greatly from wearing it. The biggest mistake a CGM user can make is to simply watch the numbers and never attempt to counteract the trend or use that valuable info in some way. CGMs provide actionable data; one should never ignore that data if you want to improve your ability to make your blood glucose numbers go where you want them to go!
Good luck to you! You can definitely live a long, full and meaningful life with diabetes. I hope you continue your participation here. I’ve learned more from other people with diabetes than any other source.
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Hi Sprocket1! Yes I’m Canadian, from Quebec smile: (bet the fact that I speak both French and English gave you an hint haha)
Thanks @Terry4 ! I’ll definitely try to learn more about CGMs, they sound very interesting for managing diabetes.
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Great. We’re in Ontario. As another poster said, there is so much to learn from these forums. I’m glad you joined. There are so many experienced, wise T1d’s on this board to help you out.
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Checkout ‘The Jukebox’ podcast! It’s great if you don’t have time to sit and read a book!!! All things about diabetes in conversation format!
Hi Alice
I was 13 when I was diagnosed with type 1 (in 1986) and at that time blood sugar tests took about 5 minutes. There was no Humalog-- the fastest insulin was called “regular” which has an activation time of 4-6 hours so you had to plan your meals out in advance. At 13 years old the idea of having plan everything ahead was horrible. I have a feeling that most people probably failed with their treatment in those days because it took an extraordinary amount of self-control to treat the disease.
Today, we’re on the verge of automated insulin delivery where most of the horrible dosing decisions will be taken away from the patient and put into an algorithm. So, you’re actually pretty lucky to be diagnosed in 2018 (if there can be a lucky time to get diabetes). The one I’m most excited about is the one from Ed Damiano at Massachussets General Hospital (MGH), the iLet, which will essentially be a dual chamber pump that will dose both insulin AND glucagon, while monitoring your blood sugar every 5 minutes with a Dexcom CGM. It will require very little user input from the patient, learning your body’s metabolism and giving microdoses throughout the day. BG trending up? Insulin. BG crashing? Glucagon. It’ll be fantastic.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you might not have diabetes for the rest of your life. There’s another study out of MGH that is using the 97-year-old tuberculosis vaccine BCG in super doses to actually CURE type 1 diabetes. Essentially, the vaccine targets and kills the renegade T-cells (the white blood cells that are responsible for destroying insulin producing cells). And what the study has found is that once the T-cells are eliminated, the pancreas begins producing insulin again!! It’s pretty remarkable. They’re in Phase II trials right now. You’re not too far from Boston, so you might want to look into it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-018-0062-8
The bottom line is to keep your blood sugars under control until such time as technology lifts the burden from your shoulders a bit, and then when the cure comes around you’ll be in top shape to enjoy the rest of your life diabetes-free.
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Alice such a great attitude, I was diagnosed way back in 1976. I can’t believe how far things have come, hopefully some day we will get a cure. In the mean time keep that attitude like some others have said control your diabetes don’t let it control you.
As everyone else said, I love your attitude! It was about 30 years ago (I was in early elementary school) when I was diagnosed, so all I had was my doctor and parents to help me. But now with the Internet and sites like this, it’s great being able to ask actual users about scenarios I come across. Even the best doctors in the world can’t always help as well as people that have actually experienced it. I love being able to ask questions and get answers from people that learned it through experience rather than a textbook (not that doctors aren’t helpful, it’s just a different kind of helpful, since they sometimes aren’t allowed to say certain things). Always be honest, don’t be afraid to ask questions (we all do things that we look back on and call ourselves “stupid”, but we’re human, right?), and don’t be afraid to share your experiences as well, it can help us all know that maybe we aren’t doing anything wrong. English may not be your first language, but if I could get everyone on the Internet to speak it as well as you, it would be a miracle (people on some forums get so lazy in their posts I’m not even sure what they’re talking about!). Once again, WELCOME, I have a feeling you will be a great member!