I’m not much of a writer, but I think writing about everything that has happened in the last few months might help me deal with it or maybe just understand it a little better. On May 6th, I was diagnosed with type 1. It was all pretty shocking. It still is.
I had all of the classic symptoms of diabetes, I was insanely thirsty all of time for the past couple of months. I would buy gallons of juice at costco and it would be gone within a day. Also, my vision got progressively worse.... I thought it was because I turned 30 and needed to update my prescription. I lost some weight...although it took a while for me to notice, since I rarely weigh myself. And finally I started having terrible leg cramps at night. One night when I couldn't sleep because of the leg cramps, I googled leg cramps, and found the long list of symptoms for diabetes, of which I had every single one of them. The next morning, I made an appointment to see a doctor. She ran some tests, and then called me the next day to tell me that I should rush to the emergency room or I could risk going into a comma (scary).
I spent the next three days at the ICU, recovering from something called ketoacidosis (dka), and learning much about diabetes. What? I have diabetes.... I honestly did not know much about it except for that there was no way that I had it. I've always been healthy, I didn't even have a primary care doctor, it is still pretty shocking, at least for me. For whatever reason, I associated diabetes with unhealthy older folks. Not me! Now I realize that type 1 is an entirely different disease then the ubiquitous type 2.
From what I was learning, a life with t1d seems absolutely miserable. I hate needles, blood and I love sugar. Having to test my blood sugar 5+ times a day, and giving myself multiple insulin injections seems like an absolute nightmare. I know, like everyone keeps telling me, I will get used to it, it will become second nature, blah blah blah.... but I don't want to get used to this. I don't want to have to carry tons of crap with me everywhere I go, and constantly think about what I'm going to eat, always worry about what my blood glucose is doing, and have to give myself insulin every time I want to eat something. It's been a few months now and I still get pretty depressed about it.
I wonder how other type 1s dealt with it when they were first diagnosed.