Birthday Wishes

I do not know how I got Type I diabetes.  No one in my family has diabetes.  I am the middle child, and neither one of my siblings have it.  Now, I may have a great-great-great grandmother that had it, but otherwise, no one “gave” this to me.  Yes, it’s true that diabetes is oftentimes inherited, but that is not the case for me.  I was randomly selected to struggle with this for the rest of my life, longing for the day when I could be “normal.”

I tend to go through stages in my life where I wonder why this happened to me.  Why did my body attack itself?  Why did God choose to give this disease to me, and not to the mean girl in my 7^thgrade class that made fun of me every day?   What did I do, at the young age of 3 to deserve this?  Why does my life have to end early, hooked up to a dialysis machine?  Why?  It’s unfair. It’s cruel. 

My Sister and I

Every year on my birthday, when it was time to make a wish and blow out the candles, I would wish to no longer have diabetes.  Every.  Single. Year.  If anyone asked what I wished for, I would blush and refuse to say, trying to hide the fact that I’ve had the same wish for 10 years.  I would always think to myself, “isn’t it obvious?”   But no matter what, I continued wishing at every birthday, and I continued praying for a cure till I was about 14-15 years old.  It was at this time in my life when I finally realized that it was pointless to waste my wishes on this.  A cure is not going to happen in my lifetime, and that was obvious.  

During these times I would cry… a lot.  I’d get embarrassed easily when I had to get my meter out and check my blood sugar at school, with everyone staring at me.  It started to become an inconvenience.  I didn’t want to do this anymore.  I got mad at everyone that didn’t have diabetes, practically holding a grudge against them.  No one understood me, and my close family never would.  When I went out to eat, everyone would start chowing down, and I’d still be trying to figure how many carbs I was about to eat.  It was extremely frustrating.  I began to slack off on taking care of myself.  I quit checking my blood sugar, sometimes only checking it once a day- if that.  I wouldn’t figure for my meals until an hour or so after I ate, when my blood sugar had already risen to 300 or more.  My parents got angry.  They cried.  My mother threatened to take me to a therapist.  My father looked me with tears in his eyes, asking why I was doing this.  I was breaking my parents’ hearts.  I was killing myself, and they thought I was doing it on purpose.

The only thing that helped me through this period in my life was time.   Out of the hundred appointments at the diabetes care center, I still could not change my attitude and neglecting behaviors.   It took time.  There was nothing anyone could do, till I realized for myself that I needed to grow up.  Sometime after high school, I started to put my life in perspective.

As I have matured, I have finally come to the conclusion that things just happen.   It took me a long time to get here, but as the cliché says: bad things happen to good people.  I was chosen to deal with diabetes.  So, okay.  I can do this.  I have chosen to go through life with a smile on my face, and hope in my heart that one day there will be a cure.  Many diabetics walk through life with a chip on their shoulder, but I refuse to be one of those people.  I refuse to let diabetes stop me from living my life.  I will get married, I will have children, and I will be healthy.  I’ll live for my family, for Joe, and most importantly, for myself.  You see, maybe I was chosen to use my experiences to help others when I grew older.  Maybe this is all part of a big plan, a bigger picture that a young girl blowing out her candles on her Barbie birthday cake did not understand.