 I was diagnosed with diabetes my freshman year of high school. This is a hard time for most people anyways because you are starting a new time in your life. My best friend was over at my house and we were having a sleep over. She kept on commenting on how I was spending the whole night in the bathroom. I didn't think anything of it except that I was drinking a lot therefore I had to go to the bathroom a lot.
Then after a few days my mom had noticed that I really was drinking extreme amounts of liquids. I was always holding a huge bottle of water. And I was constantly refilling it. One Monday at lunch, I was sitting in the cafeteria with my friend Esther and I told her I was going to go get something to drink. I came back to the table with a water bottle and two bottles of lemonade.
After a couple of days, my mom showed some concern for the amount of liquid I was drinking and how often I went to the bathroom. I said to her, "there's nothing that can be wrong with you if you're just drinking too much and going to the bathroom too much." She told me, "Well, those are symptoms of diabetes." But neither one of us thought that was the problem. I didn't even put the thought of me having diabetes in the back of my mind, there was no way I had it.
Meanwhile I kept asking my mom to buy the powder lemonade for me which is pure sugar and at the time I didn't know this but that was the worst thing I could be drinking. We had no school that Wednesday and I was out running errands with my mom and my two little brothers. I was feeling sick; tired, stomache ache, mostly flu symptoms. I was overdue for a hepatitis B shot anyways and we were near my doctor's office so my mom brought me in to the doctor. I was terrified of getting the hepatitis B shot, and I was trying to do everything possible to get out of it. I went into the doctor's office and she asked me what my symptoms were. She took a urine sample and came back into the room. "You're diabetic." She said it so coldly, like it was no big deal. She went on to say what the disease was but I didn't hear anything else. My eyes started to water and I was trying my hardest to hold back my tears. After five minutes or so of the doctor talking I looked at my mom and she was crying, that's when I burst out in tears. I had only known one diabetic my whole life, and all I knew was that she had to watch her diet and give herself shots and put her blood into some machine that told her some number. I didn't know anything about diabetes. I sat there and wondered how much my life would change. I thought of all the times I would go into Walgreen's with my friends and we would pick out tons of candy to eat, or going to great America and getting cotton candy. I thought that candy was a no for me from now on. From what I knew, if someone is diabetic they could not have any sugar. The doctor told me that I would have to go to the hospital for a few days and nights and learn all about everything. Well, the only good part of that doctor's visit was that I didn't have to get my hepatitis B shot that I was so scared of.
So my Mom and little brothers and I drove home to my house and I was so scared, I didn't know what was going to happen!!! My mom called my dad who was in London on a business trip. I called my best friends and I cried to them on the phone. Finally my mom told me to pack, because we had to drive to the hospital. I was very hungry and I asked my mom if I could eat something. We both felt so lost, my doctor didn't tell us anything!! I didn't know if I could eat, drink, sleep. So I had a bagel and cream cheese. Then at about 7:00PM we started driving to the hospital which was about an hour away.
I went to Children's Memorial Hospital. My family has a tradition that when we are driving kind of far we play the "alphabet game" where you need to try to find words that start with every letter of the alphabet on signs on the road. As we started to play I realized that I couldn't see the signs. . . everything was blurry. I told this to my mom and she got very worried, as did I. Finally we got to the hospital and checked in and got a room. I was very fortunate. . . I only really had diabetes for about a week before I was diagnosed with it. Some people have it for months and can get very sick before they find out. The first time the nurses tested my blood sugar it was 394. For being just diagnosed, that is not that bad of a number. However, the doctors were telling me and my mom that blood sugar number need to be between 70 and 120. So 394 sounded very high to us! I was given a shot of insulin but I had no idea what that meant. After I was there a day, I had learned the kinds of insulin, when you need insulin, how you feel when you don't have enough sugar in your blood or when there is too much. The doctors said that I would not be able to leave the hospital until someone in my family; my mom or dad or I could give me a shot without the doctor's help. I was terrified of shots.
Finally after three days at the hospital I was able to test my own blood sugar and my mom and dad had both given me shots. I was also drawing up my own insulin. I remember one nurse came in with the two kinds of insulin that I was using and told me to draw it up in the syringe and then told me that I was doing the wrong kind of insulin and made me change it. I told her I thought I was right and my mom agreed with me, so the nurse went out and found a doctor to prove me wrong only to find out that she was wrong and if I hadn't noticed I could've gotten the complete wrong amounts of insulin that day.
The night I came home I was so confused about everything. There were so many nurses and diabetes educators, and dieticians all telling me different things. The first couple of weeks at home were VERY hard. It sometimes took me an hour before I could get the courage up to prick my finger and test my blood. I stuck to a very strict diet and the same schedule everyday. Finally after about a week, I was giving myself my shots instead of my mom giving them to me. After two weeks, I had a second check-up at the hospital where my diabetes educator showed me how much insulin to give if I wanted a snack. This way I didn't have to stick to such a strict diet, I could eat a snack if I wanted and just give extra insulin. After about a month I was back to my normal regular day, I was able to eat whenever and go out with friends and even have sleep overs again. Of course it was hard at times, and I wished I wasn't diabetic . . . there was one thing that changed that though, camp.
July 2000
When I was first diagnosed with diabetes my diabetes educator told me of diabetes camp. It sounded kind of stupid to me. A camp where everyone was diabetic? I had gone to overnight camp before but it was fun! I didn't want to go to a camp for a week where the only thing you did was learn about diabetes. My grandparents told me they would pay for the camp if I wanted to go. Ironically, the summer before I was diagnosed I went to a regular overnight camp and I met a girl there who told me that she goes to diabetic camp and loves it. So I decided to give it a try. I had never gone to a camp before where I didn't know one person! I am very out going though, so I wasn't too worried about it. When it was the morning of camp, my mom and dad and I drove up to the pick up site. There were lots of kids and their parents and two coach buses. I remember my mom saying to me, "These kids all look pretty normal." I just kind of murmured, "Yeah." I was a little nervous, EVERYONE knew each other and I didn't know anyone. I just stood there with my parents as other kids ran up to each other with HUGE smiles and hugs for each other. I finally hugged my parents goodbye and got on the bus. There was a girl sitting alone in one of the seats. Her name was Emily. I sat with her in the front of the bus. Both of us were new that year. It was an eight hour bus ride with one rest stop. We talked the whole time and HOPED that we would be in the same cabin. We got to the camp site in Michigan and found out that we were not in the same cabin because she was 14 and I was 15 years old. I picked out a top bunk and put my sleeping bag and pillow and stuff on it. The girl who put her stuff on the bunk next to mine said hi and we clicked immediately. Her name was Emma and she had been going to this camp for many years. I was able to become myself with these girls automatically. There was something different about this camp then regular camp. My mom thinks it's that all of the kids there have a "special bond" because we are all diabetic. Whatever it is, it was wonderful! At the end of the week I had made so many GREAT friends!! I felt like I had known these people for years! I didn't want to leave camp!! Not to mention the camp grounds were amazing and the camp staff is amazing!! It was just like regular camp except everyone there was diabetic. I fell in love with this camp. Everything about it. I don't think I can even put my feelings for the camp, and the campers I met into words. It was just truly an amazing experience. When I got home, I missed it so much! I could not wait for the next summer and the next and the next. I kept in touch with all my camp friends through mail, email, chatting online, and talking on the phone.
We tried to get together as much as possible but since we were all mostly 14 and 15 years old we couldn't drive to each others houses. Most of us lived in the northern Illinois area so we weren't too far from each other. I made my closest friends ever at camp. When I needed someone to talk to I would always turn to my camp friends. Any diabetic knows that it's hard to talk about diabetes to someone who doesn't have it; this gave me people to talk to about ANYTHING. My best friends throughout high school I met at camp.
July 2001
Emma, Jessica and Nicole are my closest friends to this day. I am now a freshman in college and I still talk to all my camp friends. I have come so close to some of them. I recommend camp for every diabetic that I meet or anyone who reads this.
Camp is great for all diabetics; there are about half the campers on an insulin pump (you can read about what that is in Ashley's Pump at "Ashley's Diabetes Information Center" website) and about half are on shots of insulin. I didn't ever want to switch to the pump but everyone that I knew on the pump loved it!! My friend, Brian, had been on the pump almost the whole time he had been diabetic and he says he couldn't imagine going back to shots. About a year and a half ago I started using the pump. The pump is nice because it allows you to eat whenever you want without having to give a shot. After my first year of camp whenever my mom would say to me, "I bet sometime soon there will be a cure." I would always say, "If there is one sometime soon, I don't want to get it until I am too old to go to camp." Camp was all I looked forward to all year. This past summer was the last year I could go to camp because next year I will be 19 years old. The camp I went to was for 14-18 year olds. However there is also a camp for 8-13 year olds. This past summer I was able to be a counselor at the overnight camp for 8-10 year olds. I had the 8 year olds in my cabin. This was also an amazing experience for me. I am in college to become an elementary school teacher, so being fully responsible for ten 8 year olds with diabetes was great for me. The other counselors were mostly kids that I had gone to camp with. It was great for us counselors to look at the kids and think that they are "the future us."
I try to help out people that I know who are diabetic but don't go to camp. Kids at my high school who were diagnosed were usually given my name by the school nurse and I would talk to them if they ever needed a boost. It can get really hard being diabetic with no one to talk to. My Mom is a third grade teacher at a school near my high school. She always gets the diabetic kids because she knows more about the disease then other teachers. Last year I started going to elementary school classes with diabetic students in them and giving the class a talk about what diabetes is and how it feels to be diabetic. Doing this helped the class understand why the diabetic student may be going to the bathroom a lot or eating in class. It also made the diabetic student feel less left out, because someone who all the other kids looked up to also has diabetes. I met two children who I still keep in touch with doing these talks. Drake and Beth. They are both great kids! Drake was in my mom's class last year and Beth this year. Every year Drake's mom organizes a HUGE group of people to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation walk for a cure. It's wonderful to see her and Drake there at the walk every year. My best friend and I attend the ADA and JDF walk for a cure every year together. Beth attended the diabetes camp that I was a counselor at and she was in my cabin. This summer I am going to be a full time nanny for Beth and her little brother.
I am now in my first year of college. I am living away from home, living away from everyone who knows anything about diabetes. No one in my dorm really knew anything about diabetes. The first week or so that I lived there I had many low blood sugars in the mornings, but my friends at college just figured that I was sleeping late and I was a deep sleeper and that's why I wasn't waking up. But it's gotten easier now as my friends are all learning about diabetes. My roommate and closest friend at college, Ashley (we are known as "the Ashley's") has learned a lot about it and her grandpa also has type 1 diabetes, so she can talk to her family and me about things, that makes it easier on both of us. I am really enjoying college, and having diabetes is not affecting my college experience.
Diabetes was probably one of the worst things that ever happened to me when I was diagnosed. But I cannot imagine how different of a person I would be if I was not diagnosed with it. All my friends would be different. I wouldn't have had the same kinds of summers all throughout high school. I wouldn't have been able to help these kids. If I was given the choice now to have not been diagnosed with diabetes, I wouldn't take that choice. Although it is VERY hard at times, the rewards I have gotten from it outweigh the bad times.
My email is ashleycEIU@hotmail.com , please email me if you want to talk about anything.
Check out the camp I went to Triangle D Teen adventure Camp.
|
