Empath Vortex

Around Christmas 2006, I started showing some really odd symptoms and started to get “sick”. I would get dizzy, light-headed, and shaky if I hadn’t ate in a minute. I was drinking excessively more than I normally would and urinating along with that. I lost quite a bit of weight. I was 10 years old. So, all of that was pretty alarming to my dad and grandma. Who had once been through an experience like this with my dad when he was diagnosed at age 13. So, on January 1st, they took me to the Children’s Hospital where my life changed forever.

At 10 years old, I had a life changing diagnosis of Type One Diabetes. Along with that diagnosis comes a long list of symptoms & issues. We will go over some of those throughout my blogs.

Type 1 Diabetes Basics

How Does Type 1 Diabetes Affect the Body?

• Type 1 Diabetes being a chronic autoimmune condition means:
  • that the body’s immune system attacks itself – much like celiac disease.
  • The immune system attacks the body’s beta cells (aka, islet cells).
    • These are the cells in the body that produce insulin.
• Overtime, people with Type 1 Diabetes lose all beta cells and cannot produce insulin.
  • Insulin is the hormone that allows the body to use glucagon (sugar) in the bloodstream as energy.
  • Insulin acts as a key that unlocks the body’s cells, allowing glucose to enter and be absorbed.
• Converting blood glucose is the body’s main way that it gets energy, so without insulin, it has to resort to breaking down bodily tissue such as muscle and fat stores.

What Causes Type 1 Diabetes?

• Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is neither preventable OR curable.
• While its cause is unknown, studies suggest that Type 1 Diabetes results from a genetic predisposition – typically combined with an environmental trigger.

I believe a mixture of other autoimmune conditions/illnesses/diseases in the line of genetics and an environmental trigger is a common cause of Type 1. Like with me, my father was diagnosed with Type one at 13 years old (he was the first in the family with type one and they told him when he was diagnosed in the 80’s that it would “skip a generation”), but he and the rest of my paternal side also have hypothyroidism – another autoimmune issue. So, I think the more autoimmune issues there are in the genetics, the higher the chance is of getting Type 1 or some other kind of autoimmune issue. I never thought of the timeline of it before and it’s going on (19 years), but I think my “environmental trigger” was the really bad vehicle accident that I was in about 7 months before I was diagnosed. I wasn’t injured physically but I did suffer PTSD for quite a while – to the point that my family never thought I would drive myself.

How Do You Manage Type 1 Diabetes?

• Living with Type 1 Diabetes requires constant attention to prevent hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) or long-term hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) complications.
• Blood sugar levels must be monitored either with finger pricks or a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).
• Insulin doses must then be carefully calculated based upon:
  • Activity and stress levels
  • Food intake
  • Illness
• These calculations are rarely perfect, resulting in a tremendous emotional and mental burden for both patients and caregivers.

A lot of this just skims the basics of Type 1, there is so much more that goes into it. But know that I’ve been dealing with the ins and outs of this condition for almost 19 years (since I was 10) and I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that you can do everything right like you’re supposed to, and your blood sugar is still going to have a mind of it’s own sometimes.

**disclaimer: the pink blocks are my writing and the basics that aren’t, are from Beyond Type 1.**