School and diabetes ( a teens point of view)

I always push myself and though at times I feel inadequate with all the standards put on me by teachers, parents, other important people in my life I know I can do it. I can do this, I know I can do this, I will do this are words I frequently say to myself when I am given a test that by the end I am in tears and I know I have failed it badly. I have tried hard because I never want to be known as the dumb one the one who just doesn't have it, to have the permission to use my mind for more than just normal stuff. I love to think. So other than completely telling the whole world hat I am an absolute nerd who is better at studying than keeping up with facebook I am also here today to tell about my experience, advice, and lists for surviving high school with type 1 diabetes.

Here is the link to the rest of this post on my blog: http://mylifewithneedles.blogspot.com/2012/08/highschool-and-type-1-diabetes.html

Interesting blog, I don't always click out on blogs that link elsewhere but figured what the heck. I think that a lot of people feel very isolated in high school, with or without diabetes. I was fortunate to have some good friends and wasn't dx'ed until junior year so I sort of just kept rolling.

It sounds like going back to the pump is a good idea for you and it's very impressive to make a difficult and potentially uncomfortable decision to go back to a pump at your age. I resisted a pump for YEARS and still kick myself sometimes for not having gotten one sooner.

Re other things to do, have you read "Think Like a Pancreas" by Gary Scheiner or "Pumping Insulin" by John Walsh? Fellow member/ famous weightlifter Ginger Vieira wrote an interesting book called "Your Diabetes Science Experiment" that's very readable and might have some appeal for you as well. All of these go step by step through the process of figuring out how much insulin to take and how to make adjustments yourself. If your BG is flying all over the place, I suspect it would be *very* useful to go back to the beginning and read a book that will show you how to figure stuff out. I'd say that YDSE and TLAP are a bit more lively and might be more fun to read. TLAP is a good conversation piece as I had it on my bookshelf in our main "rumpus room" for years and people would always come over and say "Think Like a Pancres, what the hell is that?" I've since become friends w/ Ginger through FB (I got her book as a bonus when I bought a running shirt from other member Heidi Jane-James...but it's a good read!). You don't spell out what you're doing but I know different people in your cohort have different experiences. Some people's parents (I recall a stat from somewhere that it's almost invariably the mom...) run things or maybe get directions from the doctor, or maybe just guessing. I did that from when I was maybe in my early 20s until I was about 40 so you can survive it. I didn't run my A1C up quite that much but gained a TON (275 lbs...) of weight. If you rely on doctors to make changes, they can be be useful but doctors can be slow and, if you can figure it out for yourself, I think you'll feel much, much better, except for the high school crap, which you'll feel better about when you graduate and realize it was what it was! It's very important to understand how to make changes safely too, so you don't need to use your glucagon *ever* and will feel great. All of those books spell it out. I'm sure you have lots of reading for school, etc. but I was able to read them quickly as they explained exactly what I knew had been going on and how to fix it.

It is difficult but I imagine trying to adjust now instead of eight years ago it must be much harder.