How Type 1 Diabetes Changed My Life

At the young age of two I was diagnosed with a disease that did not have a cure. Luckily, I was spared the memory of being diagnosed, but I often wonder what it would be like if I had been diagnosed later in life. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, an autoimmune disease that affects the body’s ability to manufacture a hormone called insulin. I have to prick my finger four times a day to get a blood sample to test my blood sugar, which wasn’t easy as a toddler at first, but eventually I became used to it. From the time I was two till when I was five, I had already taken 3,500 insulin shots. On the bright side I no longer have a fear of needles. Fortunately for me, technology became more advanced, and they invented something that would make my life as a diabetic much easier to handle. They invented the insulin pump. The first insulin pump I had looked like an pager that would clip onto the side of my short's, except it had a long clear tube running from it to an injection site on my hip.
My family has helped me overcome this by teaching me how to care for myself, and how to stay healthy with a disease that requires heavy amounts of management. My friends and I make jokes about my diabetes, because it helps make it feel less serious, and adds to the feeling that I have not let it overcome me. My friends and family have joined me and the American Diabetes Association in their fundraiser “Step Out to Stop Diabetes” where you assemble a team to walk a couple miles with you, and everyone makes a donation toward funding diabetes research. Over the course of 3 years my team has helped raise over $12,000 in