Two years ago this month I was diagnosed.
""So, you have diabetes (awkward pause), that must suck. You're never going to be able to drink again (longer awkward pause), as a college student that must really suck.""
With this statement from the surprisingly blunt UW Hospital nurse, the full reality of having diabetes set in.
I had been feeling very dehydrated, so I scheduled an appointment at University Health Service. I had expected them to tell me since I felt dehydrated I should just go home and drink some water. Instead they told me I had Type 1 diabetes, my blood sugar was dangerously high, and I needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible.
Over the span of the 15 minutes I was at UHS, my entire paradigm on life shifted. I went from viewing myself as a normal healthy man, to being branded with this scarlet D for diabetes. I knew nothing about the disease. I thought I'd never be able to have sugar again, which for a chocoholic is equivalent to death. I also thought it'd be painful shooting up with insulin everyday, which for a person who was afraid of needles equals death, or at the very least, extreme unhappiness.
As I was whisked away from UHS toward the hospital, the doctor tried to console me.
""Don't worry if when you get to the emergency room there's a line,"" he said, ""because your blood sugar is soooo high, you'll be bumped to the front of the line.""
I had images of me arriving at the ER. Telling them what happened, they'd pull me ahead of gunshot wound victims, people who WMDs had 'sploded upon and rejects from House's emergency room. Odds are, none of these people would be there, since WMDs are generally focused in the mid-East region of the world and House never rejects an interesting case, but in my panic, all of these thoughts seemed logical.
The hospital held me for the next five days. Five days spent trapped in that barren room almost completely demoralized me. For the majority of the time I was strapped to an IV providing life-giving insulin, which I hated at the time, but soon learned to love for its ability to keep me alive.
Staying in the hospital was dreadful. Ironically, I wanted to get the hell out of there so I could take my finals. Usually, finals take precedence somewhere below ""acquiring the bubonic plague,"" but above ""watching episodes of ‘Grey's Anatomy.'"" In my hospital stay, I found something worse than the whole lot of them.
The one bit of consolation I learned during my stay—contrary to my fears, and the misconceptions about hundreds upon thousands of people—diabetics can have sugar. There's a reason we shoot up insulin, and that's to process said sugar.
The most thankful thing I've learned during my two-year trip through this diabet-astic world directly contradicts Ms. Blunt Nurse. Yes, having diabetes does suck slightly; I'll give her that. However, it is manageable, not the death sentence she doled out to me. As for never drinking again? I'll just say I am a college student, and I have lived the full college life.
