Day 1 is Type 1 Day!

My biggest wish for this month is for ALL types to come together but to celebrate the similarities but also emphasize the differences between us. I want people to understand that, across and within types, diabetes is not a one-size-fits-all disease.


I am a type 1 diabetic. I have been for 18 years. I am on an insulin pump. I test my blood sugar 6+ times per day. I didn't eat too much sugar as a child. I can't just eat better or exercise more or take a pill and cure this. Type 1 is a lifelong disease that requires daily-- hell, hourly-- monitoring and management. This is how it all started for me.


July 20, 1992. My tenth birthday. We were having a special brunch at Alexander's in Cape May, NJ and I couldn't even enjoy my favorite omelette because my hands, feet, and, worst of all, mouth were covered in painful sores. The dreaded "Hand, Foot, and Mouth," or Coxsackie, had been making the rounds and I was unlucky enough to pick it up. Misery. All I wanted was to stop being in so much pain, to be able to eat normally again. Little did I know that that seemingly temporary inconvenience would have such a life-changing impact.

Less than a year later, my family began noticing my extreme thirst, hunger, and frequent bathroom trips. Always a skinny kid, I dropped so much weight that I looked like a walking skeleton or someone recovering from a debilitating disease. April 1, 1993, I saw my pediatrician, who sent me right to the ER with a blood sugar of 303. Type 1. Then it seemed like it fell out of the sky. So random. Now research is linking Coxsackie with type 1 diabetes, or at least with accelerating the process.

I remember being scared for a little while. I remember crying for a few minutes as my mother filled out the admission paperwork, then being excited at the adventure of being in the hospital. I remember injecting an orange with saline to the point that one tap would likely cause it to burst like a water balloon. I remember sitting on the floor of the on-call doctor's office and showing him that I could inject myself in the arm, the last hurdle to discharge. I don't remember life before diabetes. I don't remember not worrying about injections and glucose levels and carrying spare supplies.

I'm 29 and I've had diabetes for longer than I didn't have it.

What's your story?