A Rant, A Story, Take It As You Will

Hello all!

I'm fairly new to this subreddit and as a type one diabetic, I like to surround myself with people I can relate to the best, and why not a stupid disease?

Anyways, I've been thinking alot about my condition recently, and wanted to at least find some way to express my stresses and conflicts with having this disease to you all.

Whether you think I'm a pityful person, looking for attention, or even threatening, I want you to understand I just want my story to be heard. There's probably nothing special about it, and take it with a grain of salt, please.

Anyways, let's begin.

Back in January of 2015 I was in a pretty annoyed stage in my life. In 6th grade I had the typical bullying, nothing super strange. For those 3 years prior to that date, I had eaten terribly. I would eat so bad that I needed painkillers every once in a while to get rid of my headaches from a flow of sugar and sodium. Eventually, my body popped, or something. On January 14th, 2015, I was playing video games and noticed that every 15 minutes I would go to get a drink, and then go to the bathroom. This happened all night, and asked my mother about it.

(Btw, my mother is a type 1 diabetic of 35 years).

She immediately checked my sugar to see it was 350. I actually found out I'm very lucky to have it that low when diagnosed, as higher could've caused more extensive treatment. Nonetheless, I was shattered. I was witnessing my future going into pieces. I'm not saying diabetes ruins your life, but it's a bottleneck in a variety of ways.

I saw a doctor who sent me to a children's hospital. There, I spent 5 days being trained. We used those stupid flimsy syringes and viles. My mom was very supportive during all of this, and I was ready to take my life more seriously. The experience at the hospital wasn't anything special, just routine stuff and I was back in school the next week. Of course the bullies used my diabetes to beat me down, but I slowly grew ignorance finishing that school year.

Now in the next few years, my diabetes was unchanged. My A1C wasn't terrible, and the prices weren't bad. And then the prices got bad. At one point, we had to cancel a refill at my doctor simply because we couldn't afford it.

Also for context, I am not poor. My father is the only person who worked in my house at the time, making around $70,000 a year. I don't care how much he makes, I love him and he makes our lives work. Anyways, he couldn't make the money required and we just skimped out on insulin and fasted for a brief amount of time before we got more. Sure it was 100% dangerous to do that, but money was objective.

Another event that killed me was when I was in an abussive relationship. Starting in 2018, I was manipulated, abused, and sexually harassed by a woman. I won't go into the details of everything, but the stress and anxiety of being beaten by her caused my sugars to skyrocket, and I had ketones for a week. It was probably the worst experience as a diabetic since it was painful crushing down water bottles constantly, and heavily monitoring my sugar.

Shortly after breaking up, I got a GCM. Now for one thing, it was free, which was nice. On the other hand, it hurt. I'm not saying this to be whiney, but they seriously intended for me to weekly shove a 2 inch needle into my abdomen, and not touch it? For one thing, my niece grabbed it and ripped it out of me at one point because she was curious, and Everytime I took it off, the sticky residue refused to come off my skin. After 2 months, I ditched the GCM. I wound up having it for 2 more weeks because my endocrinologist threatened to halt my prescription if I didn't complete the 3 month plan they had for me. I don't know if she legally meant to do that or said it for show, but I just did it anyways.

But here's the tricky part, I know it sounds fishy, but my life has slowly come into total control of my disease. What I mean by this is that my future, my career, and my kids are all influenced simply because of a disease. I realized this when I became much more understanding of health insurance. My dream has always been to become an electrical engineer. I even took AP classes, and passed them no problem. I also got a 1150 on my SAT. But the problem came when I realized that I couldn't afford insulin in the time I wouldve used to attend college and whatnot. I found myself at a deadend, and even my social worker at my high school reccomended me join the trades.

Now being an electrician is nice, since I can work anywhere, and there is always demand. But I feel so cheated out of my life because I can't persue my career since my disease limits my financial capabilities. Not only that, but the insurance from the union provides better coverage of my insulin, and would reduce the costs more than an electrical engineer.

It frustrates me that my job opportunity is ripped away, and could even interfere with my role model to my future kids. I don't want to tell them that I grew up proper and smart, to just throw it away to go to trades because of my disease. I don't want to sound like I straight up gave up either. I thought long and hard the decision, and my therapist, social worker, and parents agreed that continuing to trade school is the best I have for my disease and it's affordability.

I know I'm strong, and bet you all are too, but really think, is your life controlled by your body? It sounds very subjective, but in my eyes I see it that way.

Again, this is just a rant and I want my story to be read by at least someone out there. I'm not a special person, I'm just one of you.