Tag: actually diabetes

kirkwallhellmouth:

To add to something the post I just made points out (that Type 1 isn’t just for children)…

People of ALL ages can have Type 1 or Type 2 or LADA; everybody who has diabetes developed at whatever age they developed it, and then they continued to age.

Most television ads involving diabetes or diabetes medication/supplies, however, paint diabetes as involving only two age groups: children and people over 50. That’s also about how a lot of the actual literature on diabetic health and nutrition does it, too.

This leaves a HUGE age bracket in middle in a “…so what do I do?” zone. Because people who get diagnosed as kids grow up. They become young adults and then adults and have different needs than kids and older people. But as far as marketing goes? Yeah, they don’t exist as far as people who only know about diabetes from TV ads are concerned.

As someone with Type 1 diabetes who has firmly aged out of childhood and is edging toward the older end of young adulthood…it’s a weird feeling, when I stop and think about it.

It’s hard. But sometimes you find things make you feel…a little hopeful.

So this month–this week, actually, I think–marks the 16th anniversary of my diagnosis with type 1 diabetes.

Tonight I stumbled across this post (I almost reblogged it, but one of the pictures seems to be not actually for World Diabetes day, according to Google Image Search; the post also only highlighted type 1, and World Diabetes Day is for all people with diabetes, not just those with type 1) and I just cried. Because lighting up monuments for World Diabetes Day is something I didn’t know about, and the fact that people would agree to do that for a chronic illness that is too often reviled and misunderstood…I don’t have a word for how that makes me feel. “Touched” isn’t strong enough. Neither is “moved” any other word that might be used for it.

There are no words only tears of deep gratitude that someone in charge of the care of these monuments would be willing to do this, whatever their personal thoughts or motives might have been.

It seems like such a little thing, but it’s huge to me.

Here’s an article from 2007 about the first World Diabetes Day that has more pictures of more monuments.

That last video I posted reminds me that I still have not managed to reschedule my endo appointment from the last TWO TIMES the doctor’s office was like, “Yeah…that day you’re appointment’s on? We won’t be in that day…” and then they never called back and I haven’t called back in like…a month.

My A1C is not gonna be pretty, but that’s life for me right now.