Talking about T1D
I used to tell people, "I am diabetic" or "I am a diabetic" and I never liked saying that because it wasn't something that people reacted positively to, or it wasn't something that everybody understood. Previously, I wrote about my first taste of empowerment , when I (finally) learned in middle school to give myself injections. Undoubtedly, this turning point also brought about a change in attitude. Until then, I used to constantly be frustrated or angry about having diabetes, about not being able to do X/Y/Z, about being micromanaged by my parents. After I learned to administer injections to myself and especially after I started using the insulin pump, I began to feel more control over and ownership of my condition. I no longer had to rely on my mother or the school nurse, and I could take insulin whenever, for whatever I wanted to eat (within reason) or glucose reading I needed to correct. One day, I had an epiphany: that what I had been tell