Diabetes just happens, and it can happen to any healthy, active person

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is about to kick off its annual JDRF One Walk to cure Type 1 Diabetes.

It takes place Saturday at 8 a.m. in Golden Park.

Type 1 Diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes due to the fact that it generally appears in adolescence, is a chronic autoimmune condition in which the pancreas essentially ceases to produce insulin. Family history can contribute to getting the disease, but most affected are seemingly random children who are active and healthy. It just happens.

Insulin is needed to convert sugar to energy, so that our bodies can make food into fuel. Without insulin, sugar sits in the bloodstream and wreaks slow havoc on the body. In the short term, it causes fatigue, frequent urination, and pronounced thirst. In the long term, it causes significant weight loss, body cramping and nausea, difficulty healing wounds, and eventually the destruction of the heart, nerves, kidneys, and eyes.

When I was diagnosed, I was lethargic, napping every day after school, drinking and peeing a lot, and had lost a few pounds. This was odd for me — I was a ballet student with lots of energy, a couple of months shy of my 11th birthday. A doctor’s visit quickly showed very elevated blood sugar levels. I didn’t go home after that appointment. I went straight to the hospital.

Just a sixth-grader, I spent a couple of days in the hospital doodling pictures of what I was learning about Type 1 Diabetes. My friends visited me and I was being very brave for everyone. But before I was able to leave, I had to do the thing I was avoiding: inject myself with a syringe of insulin. Up to that point, the nurses had been doing it for me.

My mother over my shoulder, I lifted my shirt and pinched some fat on my belly. I held the needle up to the light and turned it so the bevel was angled properly for injection. I slowly brought it to my skin and it just barely broke through when I winced at the pain and quickly pulled it back. This happened a few times, until my mother encouraged me to just go ahead and inject it all the way in. I had to do it, so I did it. So many people over the years have seen me inject my insulin and proclaimed, “Oh my God, I could never do that.” I always say, “If you had to in order to survive, sure you could.”

I have not stopped injecting myself for even one day since that day in the fall of ’96. In fact, I inject myself about four or five times a day. But it’s not just me. I have the means and medical support to live a healthy life with diabetes. So many of the 1.25 million Type 1 Diabetic  Americans — about 1/3 of us — are not in good control of the disease. It is estimated to rob us of an average of 13 years of our lives.

So for those of you who will attend the JDRF One Walk, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Please visit jdrf.org to learn more about T1D and how we can help the precious young people who inject themselves multiple times every day just for a chance at a healthy life.

This story was originally published September 30, 2016 at 10:57 AM with the headline "Diabetes just happens, and it can happen to any healthy, active person."