Growing up, I thought it was a weakness to have to worry about one’s weight; I thought it was the person’s own fault for not being trim. Everyone should have been able to overcome that “weakness” in one way or another. At least that’s what I thought until something very unexpected happened. Two months before I left for my freshman year at Furman University, I was forced to welcome this “weakness” with open arms, whether I liked it or not. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. On Wednesday 18 June 2008, I went to the doctor for a check up so that she could sign papers saying that I was healthy and could live in on-campus housing. After getting blood drawn and getting a couple of shots, I left the appointment to get my usual reward for putting up with needles: ice cream. But this time, I didn’t go for a small ice cream cone or frozen yogurt; I wanted to try out something my friends had been talking about recently, a Chick-Fil-A milkshake. I think I got strawberry. I came home and started practicing my violin (my plan was to major in music) and got a call from the doctor at about 5 or 6pm saying my blood sugar was so high that the meter couldn’t read it (which meant it was over 500), my A1c was 16.5%, and there were way too many ketones in my urine. All the numbers she threw at me over the phone made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Was 500 a bad number? I guessed so, since she was suggesting I go to the Emergency Room immediately. How on earth was the random number 16.5 related to all of this? And what were ketones? (Actually, to tell you the truth, even now I can’t tell you what they are. Time to look it up myself.) And what did urine have to do with blood and the sugar that was in my blood?
