Happy birthday to me!

Blood glucose: 10.3mmol/l (185mg/dl)

No time.. I've had a great day.. But I need to go to bed. :P Why do all the exciting things fall on NaBloPoMo!?

In a non-birthday-related thing, I'll post the note I posted on facebook on here. Just because.

In spirit of last year's post, I thought that now would be an appropriate moment to write something new.

Last year was a fairly nondescript account of the basic physiological processes behind type 1 diabetes.

This year, I have been living with it for one year more.

Since being diagnosed with type 1 (juvenile) diabetes, I have had 13,700 blood tests, 2500 insulin injections, and around 180 cannula insertions.

Since last year, I have moved from around 7 shots of insulin per day to wearing an insulin pump. I wear it all the time (yes, that includes when I sleep) and it's attached to me with a needle (6mm long). I can take it off for up to an hour. I have heard from parents across the world of their children's cries of "I'm free!" when their pump is removed for a few short minutes before they change the cannula (every 2 or 3 days). Adorable, but heartbreaking. Whenever I think of the children ranging from just a few weeks old and upwards who have to cope with the pain and the problems caused by this stupid disease, it just makes me want to cry and throw something at the wall. The children who aren't going to grow out of it. They are just going to get older.

They will stop being children with diabetes to become teenagers with diabetes, and adults with diabetes. The seemingly unending challenge of pricking fingers, tiny, or large and calloused, 10-15 times a day is difficult, for the children, and for the parents. Waking up at 1AM, unable to think straight, close to losing consciousness, barely managing to gulp down some orange juice, is difficult enough. Waking your child up to do the same must be close to unbearable.

Looking at the blood glucose meter to see yet another high or low number, yet another challenge to face, is hard. But it's certainly easier than the death by starvation faced by children who developed diabetes before the 1920s. If I was born 100 years earlier, I would have died at 14. That is scary. We have come so far in under 100 years.

Here's to hoping we have a cure before the next 100 are over.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven't already, please go to JDRF aware and turn your profile picture blue for November 14th, to show support for the juvenile diabetes research foundation's relentless hunt to find a cure.