Been injecting myself since I was four (Not Heroin)

Question I encounter a lot: “What’s that cord sticking out of your pocket?”

Short Answer: “I’m a diabetic.”

Long Answer: I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 4 and my father cried for the first time since I could remember. I couldn’t help but feel that it was my fault. I was immediately forced to take shots and prick my finger multiple times a day. “It’ll go away.” I used to tell myself that to escape the fact that I was different. My body was different, my genetics were different, and my life was different. “It’ll go away.” He held me. He kissed my forehead and promised me that it would be OK. As a 4-year-old in an unfamiliar world, what would it mean to be “OK?” Would I be able to play sports like my father? Would I be valedictorian like my mother? Would I ever have the chance to make my parents proud? Nobody knew.

As I grew older, my diabetes became more complex and I began to feel the effects of those complexities. As fate would have it, I was continually hospitalized due to the inability to read and correct my blood sugars. I didn’t have the technology to successfully adapt to my new life, and that caused me to guess and check. That “guess and check” mentality is what pushed me into the hospital. I was slowly ruining my body at such a young age and doctors believed that I wouldn’t make it past my 30's.

Thanks to the internet, my father became an expert on diabetic research. His lack of knowledge about diabetes and his unnaturally stubborn behavior made for weeks of research on how he could help me. My dad researched everything from natural remedies in Asia, to stem cell injections for my damaged cells.

“I’m going to find the answers, son,” he said. I wonder what it must be like to have a child with a specific condition, and not know how to help him. If harsh reality hadn’t made me realize the severity of my predicament, his consistently swollen eyes and bubbling lips did. No parent should ever be forced to see his/her child on a hospital bed.

As technology and research progressed in the medical field, the insulin pump came about. The insulin pump is a revolutionary, battery-powered device that works to act like an artificial pancreas. This artificial pancreas is 3 inches and regulates my blood sugar levels through a series of automated insulin doses called boluses. What makes the pump so special to me is that it limits the number of shots I have to take and lowers the amount of cartilage that had built up on my body after the excessive puncture wounds over the years. This device was the key to my liberation, and my father had found it.

I got the pump after fighting with the insurance companies for about a year. The dark metal that surrounded the device was cold, the rubber smelled brand new and the LED light that illuminated the screen was so bright it made me squint. “This is going to change your life,” said the nurse, who had taken a liking to my family. “Go do great things,” she would always say. It’s interesting to think a complete stranger had said that, and I don’t even remember her name.

The insulin pump looks more like a pager than a medical device. After I received my insulin pump when I was 6, my blood sugar became consistently stable. Through the pump, I was able to start living a normal life. Thoughts of being in hospital beds had become a thing of the past, but thoughts of sleeping on tropical beaches or snowboarding on mountains had begun to be more tangible. My life had been liberated.

My body’s readjustment to my diabetes took time, but I was able to overcome that adversity through the support of my family and friends. Now, whenever someone asks about that cord sticking out of my pocket, I am reminded of how far I’ve come and how far I have left to go. I count my blessings knowing that I am alive today, continuing to defy the odds and continuing to do great things.