Hi Rita, and congratulations on making it to 60 years with diabetes! I’ll be there in a couple of years myself, and just finally got my “half century” Joslin medal last fall (I had forgotten about it until someone mentined it). Did you get yours? I was quite surprised at how nice it is, and since my sister was always the medal winner in our family I finally have one of my own😁.
If you don’t mind my asking, how did you wait so long to start your own injections?
Wow, Taylor @Darth_Yader, so this all just happened for you, huh? That’s scary that it took so long for them to figure out what you needed. Thanks for sharing your story!
Hi everyone! I’m a 36 year old woman with type 1. I was diagnosed in 1995 toward the end of my 4th grade school year when I was 10½ years old. I was in the hospital for vomiting, weakness, and extreme thirst. My sugar was over 700. I then spent a week or two with specialists at Vanderbilt in Tennessee who educated me and my family on type 1 diabetes. When I was healthy and informed enough to come back to school, my 4th grade teacher had the entire class draw cards to welcome me back. I remember my first blood sugar meter; it was a bulky gray ‘block’ that took 45 seconds to record glucose. I also remember taking NPH and R insulin through classic syringes! The tech sure has gotten better in the last 20-30 years; now I have a Freestyle Libre 2, and I take Levemir and Humalog through the pens (I used to be on the pump for over a decade, 2009-2020, but the supplies stopped getting covered by my insurance, so I settled back on the pens, which I was on in the 2000s).
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What a heartbreaking story! It must have been so scary to be alone in the hospital. Do you remember the language the drs and nurses used when you were first dx? How they explained diabetes to you? I’m really interested in the differences between one person’s experience at dx vs another and how some people are scared off with language about “complications” while others are told they can still live their normal lives!
It sounds like your dx experience was positive (not scary) and that the drs and your teacher were supportive. Is that true?
I can’t believe how long your dx took, so frustrating!
Do you remember the language the drs and nurses used when you were first dx? How they explained diabetes to you? I’m really interested in the differences between one person’s experience at dx vs another and how some people are scared off with language about “complications” while others are told they can still live their normal lives!
Hello, I got T1D at 14 months old in 1963. My father got T1D a year before I was born. My mother says I started wanting water and peeing at amounts not normal for any child. She started suspecting something was wrong and after changing my pee soaked cloth diaper, she wrung it out and got a sample then checked my urine with my fathers clinitest kit. I tested positive at 4+ and the keytone pill tested the darkest purple meaning I was in dire straits. She called my doctor hysterical and was told to bring me to the ER immediately. I was admitted into the local Catholic hospital ran by nun’s. After they got my sugars under control my parents came to the hospital to get me. They were standing in the long hallway leading to the pediatric section, and an older nun and 2 younger nun’s on either side of her all dressed in full habits came carrying me down the corridor and when they reached my parents she handed me off to my mother and the older nun looked at my mother and said, don’t let him die, then the nun’s turned and walked away. My mother nearly collapsed and my father caught her and I and we left. I was constantly reminded by my mother if I didn’t conform to strict routines and proper care I wouldn’t live past my 30’s and I would end up blind, with amputations, and die of kidney failure when being in elementary school. My mother had issues through out my life due to my diabetes. She would always introduce me to people as, this is Billy my diabetic son, to which they would show pity to her for having a child with such a horrible disease. There was no hiding my nemesis as I was growing up, because she had to make a production out of it constantly. She was a control freak in every aspect of my life with no independence or freedom without her involvement because remember, I was a diabetic. Life with diabetes in those days was difficult, but I’m thankful for what we had back in the day so we could at least survive.
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Moved from another thread, to try to keep all the “diagnosis story” responses in one place:
My daughter was Dx’d in 2015, and we definitely got the positive-messaging version, for which I am extremely grateful!
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I’d just started middle school. Suddenly, I found myself oddly thirsty. After a day or two, I realized that somehow drinking soda was making me feel worse. And as quickly as I was drinking, my body was ready to offload it. It seemed odd and confusing. The thirst got worse until I was so desperate that I was willing to drink plain water. I can’t stand the stuff. It tastes awful. Drinking it makes me queasy. Mom had tried for years to convince me to drink water. She’d had me try different brands of mineral water and flavored water and everything, and it all just tasted like water and I wouldn’t drink it. So when she saw me rushing to down a glass of my own volition, it set off an alarm bell in her head. As it happened, her father had been type 2 for decades and my father was a pediatrician. She called Dad, and when he got home that night, they had me use a urine test strip, which confirmed Mom’s suspicion.
Mom told me I was diabetic, and I thought “Oh, that’s fine, then. Grandpa’s diabetic and he’s doing great.” It wasn’t until she started crying that I got worried. They drove me to the hospital. The only available bed in the pediatric wing was in the ICU, so I slept next to a kid in a diabetic coma. He refused to treat his diabetes properly and this was at least the third time he’d let his BG get so high that he’d passed out. I thought it was odd that anyone would do that to themselves.
The next day, I got moved to a regular hospital room with a newly diagnosed diabetic roommate. Over the next week, we took classes in the hospital with a group of other young diabetics, learning about BG meters and insulin and giving injections. Meantime, we got to stay in bed and have our meals delivered and family visits and get well gifts. I dubbed it “The Hilton, with doctors.”
Once we were stable and knew what we were doing, they let us go back home, but we met up in the hospital’s teen diabetic support group to keep in touch, learn the latest, swap stories, etc.
I’m pretty lucky. If you’re going to be diagnosed diabetic, it’s hard to imagine an easier or better set of circumstances. (I mean, treatment has come a long way since then. Better insulin, better meters, better pumps, CGMs, etc. So it’s a lot easier now than it was back then. But I still had it good.)
For me it was back in the spring of 1976. I was 11 years old and started drinking a lot of soda and of course flushing it out. My father had been type 2 for a while so my mom expected this and took me to my pediatrician. He did a clinitest urine test which was very high and told my mom to bring me to the hospital. I actually remember that hospital visit more than any other one I’ve stayed. I remember being hungry all the time because they put me on the 1600 cal diet. I remember trying to eat the dried out orange they put on my tray. (It was supposed to be for me to practice injecting saline into.) I remember being horrified by the taste of tab soda. (the only diet one at the time) I remember not sleeping well and one night crying a little while feeling sorry for myself.
Going back to school the week after was interesting. Apparently the teacher had tried to explain what had happened (poorly). Everyone thought that if i got hit or hurt I would die. No amount of 11 year old verbal reasoning worked, so I remember getting into a fist fight and proving my point that way. Things went back to as close to normal then. Just diet, test and take insulin(mixture of nph and regular (pork). Went on to play football , baseball, and get my black belt in karate by the time I was 18… I started the karate about a year or 2 after i was diagnosed…
Great story, Mike, thanks for sharing!
I don’t like Tab, either. 
My name is Kara, I’m 24 years old and was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in May of 2021. For about two weeks before going into the ED, I was short of breath, lethargic, had frequent urination and excessive thirst. I did not know a single thing about diabetes as no one else in my family has been diagnosed before so I thought nothing of it and told myself I would rest during the weekend and continued on with my work week. On Sunday, 5/9/21, I woke up breathing heavy, and could not leave my bed to do anything without having to stop and sit for a minute to catch my breath. I called my primary care doctor, who told me to get tested for COVID and call them once the results were back. I was so frustrated that I almost went back to bed and was going to take a nap. After about a minute, I started to have intense pain in my side that came so fast I doubled over on the floor and could not move. My husband rushed me to the hospital, and on the way there, I was coming in and out of consciousness. I don’t remember much of the ride there or getting to the hospital, but the next day I had a few doctors come in and inform me that I was in a DKA and that they were surprised I was still walking by the time I came to the hospital. They told me that my levels were so low and my glucose was so high, that I should’ve been in a coma and if I had waited like my primary care doctor told me to, that I most likely would not have made it.
Wow, Kara!
Just, wow.
SO glad your husband got you to the hospital, and that you’re here to tell the tale!
Just curious, since you were diagnosed so recently: what kind of welcome did you get? Were you given lots of encouragement about how you can manage this disease and live a full and happy life, or did you get more horror stories about the frightening health consequences of failing to manage?
While in the ICU, I got amazing care! the unit set me up with an endocrinologist, a nutritionist and dietician. The nurse manager even set me up with a nurse who also had Tyep1 diabetes and answered all of my questions when a doctor wasn’t around. They informed me of the dangers of not managing my diabetes, but also made sure I was aware that it’s not something to be worried about and that its something that can be managed easily.
That’s really great. Fair notice, though, that it isn’t always easy. Just so you’re not surprised when tough times happen. But when they do, the incredible support and knowledge base of posters on this forum is awesome. So, hey, welcome to TypeOne Nation. We’re sorry you got T1D, but we’re glad you’re here! 
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@kfinke Hi Kara, and Welcome to the HDRF TypeOneNation Forum! I hope that you will feel at home here soon and that you will soon know that you are not alone learning this “diabetes thing”.
Like you, I had never heard about diabetes when I was diagnosed 64 years ago, I had no idea what diabetes meant. Only about 10% of people diagnosed with diabetes have a first-degree relative with diabetes - neither my parents nor any of my seven siblings had diabetes.
A word of encouragement I will offer: diabetes will not prevent you from doing or accomplish annoying, you can with a little extra effort learn to have diabetes fit into your lifestyle. Yes, the learning curve can take a while and mistakes will be made but that is part of this condition. Please feel free to ask questions and folks here will share what has worked for them - each of us is unique so, what has helped me may not fit for you.
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