Don't Stop Believin'
Twenty years ago, on March 3, 2006, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at nine years old. For those of you who don’t know, type 1 diabetes is an incurable, unpreventable autoimmune disease that is distinct from the more widely known condition, type 2 diabetes (usually misguidedly referred to as just “diabetes”). Those of us with type 1 diabetes can no longer produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar, on our own, so we use synthetic insulin via injection or an insulin pump and monitor our blood sugar with either finger pricks or the use of a continuous glucose monitor. This disease is most often, though not exclusively, caused by genetic markers that can increasingly be detected before the pancreas stops producing insulin. However, it’s still unclear exactly how those markers are transmitted. In my case, I am the only one in my family who has ever been diagnosed with this disease. Twenty years feels like a bittersweet celebration, but I am honoring that today ...