Alexis Gray: My Story with Type 1 Diabetes

Alexis Gray
Nov 1 · 6 min read

Hey guys, it’s Alexis here. I’m so glad that you guys are here to join me. So just so you know, when I was smaller, of course I was diagnosed as a brittle type one diabetic, which is outdated. Now the new term is labile, and they both mean the same thing. They just mean to you have difficult to control diabetes. And when I was growing up, I didn’t know much about it. I didn’t understand what that meant. My mom did, so she took care of everything for me. She did as much as she possibly could. That’s from going to all the doctor’s offices, visits, all the support group meetings, and all the educational things and taking all her notes while bringing things to distract me because I also unfortunately had ADDor ADHD. I can’t remember which one it was, but it was interesting.

As we all know, one of the main things that I stand for is the other 50% of diabetes that no one in the health care field teams pay attention to. That’s going to be your depression and your hopelessness. And over the years I had a lot of that as well. I struggled to just live life; absolutely hated it.I didn’t like the life that I was living. I hated it. And so I did what I could to make sure that I wasn’t here, at least in my mind. I was playing video games, listen to music, and watching TV. These were the only three things I did and it got so bad with music. My mom had to buy a new pair of headphones every single week.

She spent a lot of cash cause headphones are not cheap. I kept burning them out. I realized that there were two things that I really wanted in life. For one, obviously I just wanted to have a life that was worth living. I didn’t feel like the one that I had was up to par and I really wasn’t enjoying myself. I did not want to be where I was. It was so, so bad. But the other thing that I wanted is that I wanted to get recognized somehow and I felt that’d be a great way to break myself out of the kind of life that I had then. I wanted to do something that’s worth living for. And so I started striving for certain things like grades and becoming a professional, which is something that I have yet to accomplish.

I do have a few degrees, but I’m not a nurse or a doctor or anything. We’ll get there one day, but on my way to doing these things, what I realized was that I couldn’t keep going like that. Maybe you’ve heard me tell this story before, but one day I was just sitting on my bed watching TV and realized that there was no way out. There was only those three things that I had to do and I didn’t want to do any of them. So I sat back on my bed. I was hyperventilating and looking around the room and I was just panicking. And eventually I just said, “I…I can’t do this. I’m so…so bored.”

And then I immediately sat back up and I look around the room. “Why is that the case? I have no right to be bored and no reason whatsoever.” It was at that point that I decided I’m going to go on a journey, so to speak. I decided that this needs to stop. I don’t know how I’m going to make a stop, but I need to make it stop. And so what I ended up doing is having a sort of epiphany that I need to find a way to live my life in a way that I enjoyed living it. And so I kept moving. Basically I was a high school student then. So the one thing that I thought about was my grades. I’d never cared much about school up until this point in time, but grades was something that had actually been looked at in the past. My y dad, for example, said he’d give us some money if we did well, like if we got like straight A’s.

And so I was like “Hey, that could be something. It’s something I can do and I get rewarded for it.” Then I got my mom in on it and I got my stepdad on it too. And so it ended up being like a really awesome, awesome thing that I could have all of if I got straight A’s. And when I first started, when I first started, I wanted to make sure that I was able to do all of these things and it was kinda suck-ish because the very first semester of school that I made this decision, I missed my mark. I had one B because I had a really strict teacher who wouldn’t give me an Afor anything, even though I worked my butt off for it. I felt I just wasn’t good enough because I didn’t achieve my goal.

I cried. It was so…so sad because this was the first time I’ve ever tried so hard to do anything and it didn’t work. My parents fine with it; they all met me halfway. They were really sweet about it, but I still fell short. So, do you think I gave up? No! When I went back the next semester what I ended up doing was trying even harder. I still had that same problem because in high school you have one teacher for two quarters. And that last at the very last minute, I almost ended up with the same outcome, but I feel like that teacher maybe pitied me or something. I ended up getting an A somehow. I achieved my goal and it was just great! It was the first time I’ve ever achieved something that I really, really wanted. And after that, I got everything that I had asked for too.

And so it was awesome! What I realized at that point is I kinda like doing this. This feels great to get recognition to do things that I’ve worked really, really hard at and people see it and so I’m going to go do this. And so what ended up doing was keeping my grades up became a straight A student through the rest of my high school years. There wasn’t a single time past that one time that I got that B that I wasn’t A straight a student. After that went straight to college and what ended up doing was looking into healthcare, because everybody went into healthcare (of course). And so I learned a ton of things that I actually help teach people all around the world now.

Now, I just love doing it. There’s a ton of stuff that they’re teaching in colleges that we don’t have. We are the ones who need the people who keep forgetting to tell us,. That was the point in time where I really decided I can get behind becoming professional because I’m the type of person, I do believe, that if I gave it my absolute best, that can make a difference. And so that’s where all of my schooling came from. Once I had that decision made, that realization, I became who I am today. But of course, you know, it wasn’t easy. There was a lot of stuff that I had to do as well. Once I made that decision though, I ended up graduating. I ended up getting two degrees, one Associates in Science and one Bachelor’s in Healthcare Administration.

I’ve made the president’s list and the deans list several times. And so along the way, it was mainly just me trying to find myself. And I haven’t 100% done that yet, but I’m a completely different person now. It’s not necessarily about trying to find a life that I want to live anymore because I do want to live my now. And in the past it was not like that. But I know that there are other people out there like me who have this problem and diabetes is a huge part of it. But I know those people could really use somebody like me who’s been there and can show them a way to make it stop. And so I realized ultimately that a lot of people actually do need my help and I can help them regardless of whether I’m certified or not.

And so that’s how we ended up here today. Changing lives for living is a life worth living in my eyes at least. And so that pretty much concludes what I wanted to tell you guys. I hope you enjoyed this little session that I had with you. I’ve enjoyed talking to you and hopefully I’ll see you next time. And so I will see you and my daily inspirational or funny posts, depending on how I feel on the fly. You guys have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you later.

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