Living With Type 1 Diabetes
What's This All About & Who Am I?
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I’m Emma. I'm 28 years old and I've had diabetes -- or at least known about it -- since February 2nd, 2016. I don't fit the mold of a typical Type 1 because I have no history of diabetes in my family and I wasn't diagnosed as a juvenile... far from it! Back in January, it never occurred to me that the blurred vision, constant thirst, insatiable hunger, rapid weight loss, and chronic fatigue I was experiencing meant that I could have Type 1. After a month, I had to acknowledge that losing 15 pounds in three weeks and collapsing on the floor completely out of breath everytime I climbed the stairs to my third floor apartment was cause for concern and couldn’t be ignored. What I hoped would be a quick trip to the doctors turned into a three day hospital stay because I had a blood glucose level of 26 mmol/L and was in a state of diabetic ketoacidosis.
Finding out I had Type 1 was a shock, to say the absolute least. But after the initial growing pains of coming to terms with my diagnosis and learning about how to manage diabetes, I actually have a pretty solid handle on things. My latest A1C is below target, (6.8 - !!!) and staying on top of things has become routine. It hasn't always been like this, thought, which brings me to:
Why Does This Blog Exist?
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When I was first diagnosed, I felt like I was having a really rough go of things. Not only did I have a new and unwelcome chronic disease that I had to deal with, I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. I'm a bit of a control freak; I like to be organized and I like to know exactly what's what. Being sent home from the hospital after three days to fend for myself and take responsibility for not putting myself back in the hospital scared me.
It didn't help that my doctor tried to discharge me from hospital without teaching me how to check my blood sugar and inject myself with insulin, and when I got sick a week later with strep throat, I was beyond stressed about ketones and ketoacidosis because how to deal with sick days hadn't been properly explained to me. I had a near meltdown the first time I needed to refill the cartridge of my Lantus Solostar pen because I'd been prescribed refillable cartridges to insert into a disposable pen... D'oh. While I waited for specialist referrals to come through, I drove two hours to see my family doctor in my hometown only for her to tell me she couldn't tell me anything about Type 1 and that it would all be explained to me when I saw the specialists.
For the first month, I felt helpless and frustrated and disappointed and overwhelmed with the myriad of emotions that come along with a stressful and difficult situation and just finding out that they way you live your life has changed, forever.
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But *spoiler alert* everything turned out okay. My initial panic subsided and I got the hang of things. The thing is, there was no need for me to feel as scared as I did. That's not to say I didn't have reason to, because it was terrifying. But, there are really great resources and supports available to people who are living with Type 1, you just have to know where to look. I just didn't know where to find them and so I felt I was struggling totally alone.
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So, to answer the initial question of "Why Does This Blog Exist?", it's so that you, dear reader and fellow T1D, don't have to feel alone. Because you're not alone.
I don't pretend to be a medical expert. But I think it's important to recognize that as valuable and authoritative as the healthcare system is, it knows diabetes on a theoretical level. Unless you're extremely lucky, your endocrinologist or your diabetes nurse probably doesn't live with Type 1 on a daily basis. And having the support of fellow T1Ds is so important. We have an insider knowledge track of how to cope with our disease and the little life hacks that make things easier. And that's what this is about. Making living with Type 1 a little bit easier and making sure that no one ever feels alone.