Last weekend I celebrated my 25 year D-day anniversary.
No I didn’t invade another country. My D-Day anniversary is the anniversary of my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes.
Perhaps celebrated is the wrong word. After all there wasn’t a party, certainly not any cake. Acknowledged might be a better fit.
I won’t lie; it hasn’t been an easy 25 years. Would the last 25 years have gone smoother for me if I didn’t have diabetes? Absolutely. Yet if anyone asked I would tell them it was a blessing in disguise.
I’ve shared with you a little bit about my own childhood obesity issue. If not for the intervention of Type 1 diabetes I would have continued full speed down the road to overweight adulthood.
As I got older and started to make more and more decisions about my health, I did slip into many bad habits. Late nights, eating cheap fast food and no exercise what so ever. It was the impact that these decisions had on my diabetes, and my well being in general, that caused me to step back and say enough.
I did not want to continue to take more and more insulin. I did not want to have to take additional meds to deal with complications of high blood glucose levels and my weight. I did not want to develop insulin resistance. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Type 1 diabetics can actually develop insulin resistance and move to a blend of Type 1 and Type 2. That was not going to be me.
So I started my journey to the person I am today. Can I say that I wouldn’t have started this journey even without diabetes? I don’t know, I can’t say that for sure. All I know is that it was clearly a catalyst for change.
So instead of looking at my diabetes as a curse or an excuse, I look to it as motivation and incentive. I look at it as a both a push forward and a challenge to be faced.
Here’s to 25 years with Type 1 diabetes.
