Hey hey, why-citizens! I'm QtJenna89. I've always wanted to be in the times but I haven't had much to right about until I saw the new section "Health Section"!!!! OMG, I told myself, this rocks, I have to write in! Let me explain.
Around September of 2000 I started feeling extremely depressed. I was either shaking like crazy and about to fall asleep at all times of the day or I was nauseous and had the worst leg pains you could imagine. I was getting no sleep because I was up 3-4 times a night going to the bathroom! Over the next few months I became very weak. I had no idea what was happening to me. But at the same time I was losing weight -- WOOHOO, I thought, I feel terrible but I'm skinny!!! (I wasn't thinking straight, either, LOLzz.)
Then the shock came, two weeks before my 12th birthday. I went in for a check up and my doctor quickly diagnosed me with hypo-thyroid (that's not the shock), but the nurse wanted me to have a urine test... regular stuff, no big, right? Wrong! She came back and notified the doc that my blood sugar and ketones (I'll explain ketones in a minute) were well over the norm. My blood sugar was over 1000!!!! The normal range is 70 and 140. He walked in, explaining to us that I had type-1 diabetes, not hypo-thyroid! I was about to cry. I had always thought diabetes == fat and NO sugar. Boy, was I wrong. I was sent to Children's Hospital LA over the next two weeks, and this is what I learned.
First of all, Diabetes. What is it exactly?? Well, there's two kinds: type 1 (what I have) and type 2.
Type 2 is when a person eats sooo much sugar that the organ called the pancreas, which makes insulin to balance your body's blood sugar, overworks and breaks down. That's when you go on a sugar-free diet and take pills, etc.
Type 1 is when your body attacks itself. That's right, MY body attacked MY pancreas, so eventually it stopped making insulin. When that happens, my blood sugar goes wayyy up and that's when the ketones come in! Ketones are badddd dudes. When you have too many of them. They eat your muscles up, and after they can't find anything else, they go to your head and eat the oxygen in your brain, which is one way a diabetic can go into a coma... yes, there's another way! I have to take insulin shots to cover for what my pancreas doesn't make. When I take too much insulin, my blood sugar can easily go low. If it goes too low, I can go into a coma. I take extra insulin to make my BG go down if I'm high and if I'm low I drink orange juice or have some hard candy.
How do I know if my sugar level is high or low, you ask? Well, I don't just go on feelings. I have to poke my self with a small needle and make myself bleed, then my monitor device sucks up the blood and after 5-20 seconds (pending on the monitor) it tells me what my BG is at.
After about a year of driving back and forth from LA, I finally got a doctor closer to home (and right across from the mall =D). She told me at my first visit that for the last year the treatment I was on was outdated (that's why I'm not telling you what it was, LOLzz). She put me on a new medicine, but wanted me to be on an insulin pump. Before I could, though, my insurance and the MiniMed Medtronic company had to "ok" all of it. I was told it would take at least a week and 3 months at the most. I was fine with that, as long as I got it. Boy was I surprised when my mom told me the next day everything was done and my case was the fastest in MiniMed medtronic history to be accepted!
I was one of the first patents to use the Paradigm Pump and very soon I was on the pump. This is a device that, via a tiny tube in my stomach (which I change by myself every two days), gives me insulin from a reservoir (which I fill every time a change my tube). Then I get a "basil" 1.8 units of insulin every hour and then I give myself a "bolus" to cover my food. I am happy to say that I am stable and I see the doc every month! And through this experience, I have decided to become a doctor specializing in the immune system!! YYAYYY *clapz* It's fascinating stuff!
This was a long article and I have written it in order to educate people about diabetes. Over the last year and a half that I've had this disease, I have had countless teasing and name-calling about it. I handle it as best I can, but some people who don't know about it assume I am fat, as if that matters what kind of person I am... anyway, I'm not and I obviously can't prove it to all you people in cyberspace, but you're gonna have to take my word for it. If you don't, okay, but if you choose not to be my friend because of it then it's your loss.
Sigh... my fingers hurt and I'm tired, so I'm going to go take a nap.
Later, everyone.
-QtJenna89
P.S. If you got this far in my article, I salute you, LOLzz.
P.S.S. If you want more info on diabetes, go to:
American Diabetes Association
http://www.diabetes.org/
or
Medtronic MiniMed
http://www.minimed.com/
