My Future With T1D

So, recap of the last note, I was diagnosed with Type one Diabetes (T1D). I went to Hawaii, had a blast, and took good care of myself. I took care of myself and kept up with everything for the rest of this and next school year and graduated high school. That's when it all went downhill.

I still took care of myself, pretty well, especially with the help of my mother whom, by the time I graduated, I had been living away from for the entire second semester of my senior year. Well, we eventually started getting along, less and less. As such, she wouldn't help me with my diabetes, and I stopped wanting to do all these extra steps that came before I could eat. I eat a lot; I'm an overeater. I didn't want to wait for my food, so I stopped taking my insulin with every meal, or I would take it afterwards even though I wasn't supposed to.

Well as the summer went along, I slowly stopped taking it more and more. I still took it with most meals, but I would have snacks that I didn't take it with and my doctors kept changing my long acting insulin up to where I was taking it at school before summer and then as soon as I wake up during. That was no big deal, at first. I started getting more and more tired of it and started to get lazier and lazier.

Then, that fall, I started college at a nearby university, only about 15 minutes, from home so I could go back often and see everyone. Me and my mom made up, slightly. I was still holding a grudge, but we eventually got over that incident. Then about half a month into college, my mom moved to Texas, leaving me here in Indianapolis.

During college it got bad. I got to where I only took insulin every couple days then every few days to where I would take it maybe once or twice a week. And if you didn't know that, it's bad. I'm supposed to take it with every meal and then my long acting once a day, and I wasn't doing that. I started to feel groggy and exhausted all the time. I missed a few classes here and there—not too bad, yet.

Second semester, it started dropping fast. I wouldn't wake up for class. I was late to some classes. I wasn't taking insulin but once a week, if at all. I had reached the bottom of the hill. I lost control of my bladder, my breath stunk badly (which is a symptom of ketones, which are not a good thing to have. I still don't fully understand them almost three years later.)

I went to the hospital and got some insulin and fluids in me due to high blood sugar (HBS), ketones, and of course, dehydration (which is a symptom of HBS.) It had gotten bad. I got to go home to my dorm that night luckily. I still have yet to be hospitalized due to my diabetes since my diagnosis.

Life from then on got harder. I ended up dropping a class and stopped going to amother. Then I missed a couple for another then stopped it completely. Then I had two left that I was going to. I finished out my kinesiology class and did great. I wasn't going to chem, bio, or psych, but my sociology class was doing fine. Up until the end. Our only real assignment was this paper we had to write about ourselves. It would have been an easy paper, but I didn't do it. I decided to sleep, and then didn't even go to the last class. I went to every class and was never late until the end.

So I failed my second semester, lost my full tuition scholarship, and dropped out of college and decided to take a break. By then, my pancreas had fully died, and my diabetes honeymoon phase was over. And that meant more insulin.

I felt happier after dropping out. I moved into my friend's house because me, her, and her fiance were supposed to get an apartment the next month. That didn't work out. I was working at McDonald's, so I got to eat a lot and take home free food for my friends. I didn't have my own room. I slept either on the floor in my friend's room, or on a chair in the living room downstairs. It wasn't the most comfortable living, but it was a roof over my head, so I tolerated it.

As for my diabetes, it got worse. I got to where I was taking it a couple times a month, if that. My schedule was all kinds of crazy. I was working from 11 PM until anywhere between 8 AM and 11 AM. I was trying to look good because I was trying to become a manager. Well, it worked. They shut down third shift and I was going to management classes and became a manager for second shift from 2 PM until 1 AM and some nights even later when I started closing by myself. With no help whatsoever. After work during the third shifts, I would usually go home, sometimes falling asleep at the wheel.

This was because of my sleep schedule. I would get home and change, then go downstairs to my chair and watch either Netflix or YouTube, depending on my mood and who was around. Usually everyone was alseep. So I'd stay up for a little while then either A: fall asleep for a couple hours then wake up and spend time with my friend, or B: stay up until my friend woke up and we would hang out.

It got to where I was only sleeping at most two or three hours, so I started attempting to take a two or three hour nap around 7 or 8. I tried for 7 but got held up sometimes. Then I'd get up, get ready for work, and repeat the whole process.

I wasn't taking my insulin nearly as much as I was supposed to and it was wearing me down drastically. I was falling asleep making food, I was falling asleep taking orders, and not to mention the increased bathroom breaks due to HBS over these years.

Well, eventually, I realized these friends weren't saving up money to get an apartment, and an old friend of mine, my best friend in middle and high school, asked if I needed a roommate, as he and his fiance were moving back to Indiana from Tennessee, so I said yes and I looked at some apartments and we (they) decided on one. It was not one of the ones I had originally wanted, but it was okay. That summer, we moved in. And my Diabetes changed drastically.

To be continued...