I Know How I’m Going to Die
I’ve known since I was seven years old.
At age seven, I was told that I might not be able to enjoy sweets as much as I was used to. While this doesn’t sound like a death sentence in and of itself, the reasoning behind it essentially was.
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
No, it’s not the type that everyone makes tired, unfunny jokes about. It means that when I was a little kid, my immune system went haywire and attacked the cells in my pancreas that produced insulin.
I started losing weight dangerously fast. I remember being able to count my ribs. I remember poking myself on them. I remember the dark circles under my eyes, my gaunt face. My grandmother later told me that she thought I looked like a cancer patient.
Persistent hunger and thirst overtook me. The feeling could not be sated no matter how much I ate or drank. Constant fatigue left me unable to play outside with my friends.
My grandmother knew what was happening before we even went to the doctor. She had seen the exact same thing happen to her twin brothers, on the same day, when they were just little kids.
The doctors told me I would have to prick my finger to check my blood sugar every day. I would have to carefully measure how much insulin I had to give myself, via a syringe. I would have to count how many carbs I ate for the rest of my life. And worst of all, they told a small child that they would have to severely limit their sugar intake.
That might have been the worst moment of my young life.
I ended up only having to give myself shots for a year or so before I got an insulin pump, a device that continually delivered insulin into my system. It was a hell of a lot easier than injecting myself with syringes several times a day, but it still wasn’t perfect.
I felt like I was part robot. I had this device attached to me that I couldn’t hide. Other kids got curious at to what it was. I hadn’t even heard people make diabetes jokes yet, but I was already self-conscious of my condition. I never knew what to say. Diabetes was too hard to explain to a little kid. I still didn’t fully understand the biology behind it until several years after my diagnosis.
Come on, you can’t expect a seven-year-old to completely comprehend this disease. “Carbohydrates” was too long a word, even for my hyperlexic mind.
After high school, my parents stopped reminding me to check my blood sugar.
As a result, this annoying chore fell by the wayside. I started going long stretches of time without checking, giving myself haphazard amounts of insulin that seriously messed up my blood sugar levels.
At the same time, I was going through a severe depressive episode in college. I was wondering why I was even bothering to take care of myself when I knew I was going to die as a result of complications from not managing my condition well enough.
I considered suicide to just speed that process along.
Somehow, I made it through that difficult time. I graduated college a couple of years ago, and have recently resolved to get myself in better shape. That includes not only working out and eating better but taking care of my diabetes. And checking my blood sugar is the first step.
Just a few months ago, I got on the DexCom, a device that automatically checks my blood sugar every five minutes. It sends the data to my pump and even to my phone, and beeps whenever I get too outside of my desired range.
When my blood sugar gets too low, the pump stops giving me insulin so that I don’t pass out.
It’s the closest thing to a working pancreas that I will ever have.
Managing this condition is the hardest thing I will ever have to do. And sometimes it’s hard to see the point when I know this disease is going to kill me someday. Maybe not directly. But I’m going to die as a result of it.
Still, I might as well take care of my body while I’m still here, and live life to the fullest.
