One of the issues that comes up at least for T1s…is whether you were diagonosed as a child or adult…which sometimes devolves into a who has it worst experience…the main problem with that is that having lived only one life it’s hard to really know… and no one deals with issues the same way since you’re surrounding circumstances can have such an impact…so having been diagnosed as a child (5) I can only really speak from that perspective…
I think one of the hardest things about being diagnosed when you’re a child …is not that you will have this for most of your life (esp. the life you can receall) nor even having to deal with shots etc. but the emotional impact, especially because the people taking care of you (doctors/parents/guardians) may not always be sensitive or supportive…
Looking at photos during the year before I was diagnosed, I looked like I was a starving child…but because I only have a handful of memories before I was diagnosed, I don’t really know what it’s like to live without diabetes…It’s just always been a part of my life and it’s also become very much a part of who I am and how I see myself…so to say I would prefer I was diagnosed when I was older is difficult because it would be like trying to deny a piece of my identity…I’m not sure if those who are older when they are diagnosed share this or not (comments welcomed!) One of the the things I do envy for people diagnosed when they were older is that they experienced a honeymoon phase…I may have…but I don’t really recall it…and also getting through the teenage years would have been nice especially cause I swear diabetes cheated me out of a growth spurt!! (that or genetics…but I did end up the shortest of my sisters)
I do remember being rushed to the hospital in Pittsburgh when I was 5… and being annoyed at being woken up nurses and so they could draw blood or test and being made to eat whether I was hungry or not…and meeting the other kids there for various reasons and playing games …so it wasn’t entirely bad
There were a lot of sick kids there…and I think even then I knew that the situation for me could be a lot worse… but it also kind reinforced the scarieness of the situtuation and suddenly having to confront death… which I think is the toughest part of being diagnosed so young…because you are only just becoming aware of seeing yourself as individual and how you interact in the world…and then suddenly death is a possibility and the way to prevent that is ultimately your responsibility(though others are there to help you)…like if you don’t want to die you have to have injections…so while I couldn’t do them for myself at first…I needed to at least let others help me…(be cooperative and not struggle about it)
I remember also watching a movie when I was there (not sure what it was called) but it focused on a family and how this younger brother dealt with his older brother’s death from drowning…I think he blamed himself…but the scene where he was trying to kill himself by sitting in a closed garage with the car running (someone explained to me what was going on)… but more recently… my parents told me that the girl I was sharing a room with died… somehow I remember the details of the movie…but nothing about the girl…
so since diagnosis death, life and the surrounding questions have been a recurrent theme in my life… I don’t think that being diagnosed alone made me this way (some of it’s probably inborn personality, some the circumstances I grew up in), but I do think it first made me more aware at much younger age of my own mortality…and at the same time the responsibility to take care of this life…
死活問題 (shikatsumondai-death life problem/question)