I’m a Type 1 diabetic. I was diagnosed in October of 1993 when I was 21. It has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. You’re probably thinking, ‘What is wrong with you? There is no way it was a good thing!’ You’re right to think that way but read my story and maybe you’ll think differently.

I grew up in Springerville AZ and am the youngest of 6 children – 5 boys and 1 girl. We owned a ranch called White Mountain Hereford Ranch and the nearest person was about 45 minutes away on a long gravel road. I spent most of my time outside either working on the ranch or exploring ever farther away from home on my own. I’m very comfortable by myself and in the outdoors. I’vae always been a very active person playing in sports like soccer, basketball and baseball. I didn’t always like the team atmosphere mostly because where I lived there weren’t any people to play with, I couldn’t easily get into town to hang out with friends or teammates! So I spent almost all of my time alone or with my closest brother, Andy. I spent way more time than I want to admit to playing hacky sack. Even now I am still very good at it! I’ve always been a runner, not really for school or competing but always running everywhere I went. I think this early time spent being active – especially doing individual sports – really shaped who I am now and set me up for what was to come when I went to college.

I went to college at ASU in Tempe, AZ about 4.5 hours from home. As soon as I got to college my parents got a divorce. They sold the ranch and it became the Sipe White Mountain Wildlife Area. It’s great that it is still around and I can go visit any time I want. Although, it is pretty strange to go into my old bedroom and see it is a storage area or that my old play room is now a public restroom! Even the gross old brown shag carpet is still there, though!

My first couple of years at ASU were spent studying and rollerblading. I know! It’s not really a popular sport and has always been made fun of! But it’s a great individual sport to do especially in a big city with lots of pavement. I would spend 10-12 hours a day/night just skating everywhere and having fun. I started mountain biking around 1991 when my brother, Andy, started riding with friends at college in Alamosa, CO. It took me a few rides to really like it but ever since cycling has been my favorite thing to do. I’ve moved on from rollerblading and picked up a much more expensive sport. Yay!

Phoenix is a hot place to ride and you have to get used to the heat but I’ve always liked it when it’s hot. This is part of how I found out I was diabetic. During the fall of 1993, I was coming back from a ride and feeling really drained and dehydrated. I almost passed out driving home. When I got back to my dorm room I rested and drank a lot of fluids then went to bed. I woke up the next morning with some very sore spots on my lower left back, near my waste band still feeling pretty crappy. There were 6 or 7 red, raised bumps that looked a lot like spider bites. Have you ever been bitten by a spider in your sleep and they seem to try to escape and move along and bite you every inch so? Not painful at the time of the bite but you notice it the next day. Well this was exactly what I thought it was. I thought I was feeling bad because of spider poison or something so I went to the Student Health Center.

I told them what happened and they did a quick blood test. I thought this was normal for a spider bite, never having been treated for one before. Within 5 minutes they came back and said my blood sugar was 248 and that I was Type 1 diabetic. They said that I was feeling drained and dehydrated because I had high blood sugar and was urinating more than normal. That along with riding in the heat made me dehydrated. The spots on my back were Shingles. When my body (for whatever crazy reason) decided to attack itself and kill my insulin producing cells, it weakened my immune system. That allowed the chicken pox virus to grow in my spinal fluid and shingles appeared along the nerve endings on that side of my body. No one knows what causes Type 1 diabetes especially for someone like me that was older and had no family history of either Type 1 or Type 2 or even gestational diabetes. I’m just lucky I guess!

I didn’t believe that it could be so easy to diagnose so I got several more opinions until I finally accepted it. It was a HUGE change for me. I had always been very healthy even though I broke a lot of bones growing up. I rarely had any problems that I didn’t cause to myself. So this was hard for me to get my mind around.

I spent the first 3-5 years with diabetes learning everything I could about it and how to manage it. At that time we were doing Meal Exhange plans. If you’ve never heard of this, be happy and never look into it! If you know anything about Weight Watchers it is similar. Basically you get told how many Carbohydrates, Meats and Vegetables you can have and exchange rates to convert from one to another. Then you have to know what a portion or serving of each of those is. Finally, you get a plan based on your activity, size, etc. of how many of each thing you can have for each meal. It is very complicated and can easily overwhelm you especially if you eat out and/or don’t have control of your food. I was super extreme about it and measured everything exactly and was a perfect student of this system. This ended up giving me a lot of anxiety and severely limiting what I ate, what I could do and all aspects of my life. I finally got fed up with this new chronic illness absolutely controlling my life. It can’t control me!

I have never let anything control my life until this happened. It was ruining my happiness and I realized it was just not sustainable. So I learned how to relax and not be so regimented with my eating schedule. It also helped greatly that things went from Meal Exchanges to Carbohydrate Counting which is much easier. Before you had to measure out each thing no matter what kind of food it was. Carb counting allows you to simply count carbs instead of everything. Carbs are what will impact your blood sugar quickest and so are what we focus on now.

This more relaxed approach really made living with diabetes something I could handle and I learned how to use the tools I needed to manage diabetes to make the rest of my life better. I can tell you based on how I feel pretty accurately what my blood sugar is – is it going up or down, and more. I am very aware of my pulse just in my head/body and of my blood pressure based on how my pulse sounds and feels. These things are super important for me to know without a tester or CGM (continuous glucose monitor) generally what my blood sugar is doing. I have incorporated healthy eating from the beginning when I got diabetes and generally living a healthy lifestyle. I was lucky because I was always active but still it meant I had to make a bigger commitment to it for my entire life if I wanted to stay as healthy as possible.

This is part of the reason why I say it was one of the best things to happen to me. It forced me to take health seriously at an early age and to learn how to manage diabetes on my own. It’s not always easy or fun, and I’ve had my share of ups and downs living with diabetes. I am realistic enough to know that later in life this disease is really going to affect my body. Even with very good care the long term harms add up and will change my life for the worse in so many areas. Vision, nerves, skin, heart, blood vessels, kidneys, everything will feel the compound negatives of being diabetic. How can that be a good thing? Well, I feel that I am aware that doing the things we all do to ourselves has an impact on health. I can see it in my blood sugars when I eat poorly or take a break from exercising. I know how stress, alcohol, sweets, and sickness affect me. These things most people don’t ever really think about. I think about them all the time and try to make the best decisions while still allowing myself to enjoy life as much as possible.

I don’t let diabetes control my life – I use the tools I have learned to manage diabetes to help make my life better. It is very easy to get caught up in the negatives in life. I have chosen to look at having diabetes as a good thing instead of a bad thing. Should I just be mad or feel sorry for myself or always use it as an excuse? That doesn’t work for me so I choose to say it is a good thing.