Awareness Month!

November is Diabetes Awareness month.  When I was first diagnosed with Type 1 I didn’t tell many people; I’m pretty sure I waited a year before mentioning it on Facebook.  Last November I didn’t mention awareness month, change my FB profile picture or do anything else to draw attention to T1D.  A year later I’ve created a blog, proudly wear a t-shirt that says “Type 1 Strong,” and started looking on the JDRF web site in October to see if they were still doing the “T1D Looks Like Me” profile pictures.  What a difference a year makes!

What changed?  I didn't want to stay quiet anymore.  I have a highly misunderstood chronic disease that affects millions of kids and adults and very few people have any clue what Type 1 means.  I want to raise awareness, I want to support research efforts towards new treatments and a much needed cure, and I want the people I care about to understand my fight.  I wear a bracelet every day from a group called Beyond Type 1 that says “educate, advocate, cure.”  I wear it to remind myself how important it is to educate people about T1.  While I feel unlikely to do something like meeting with my elected representatives to advocate for increased T1 research funding, I feel like what I do here serves a similar purpose – I’m advocating for myself and everyone else with T1 by teaching people about our disease.  Though I can’t directly do anything about finding a cure, I’m able to donate and raise money for an organization like JDRF that can.

So here I am.  I can’t change the world, but I can try to change my tiny little piece of it.  I started this blog hoping to make sense of this for my parents and close friends, and now I’m reaching not just those people but friends from high school and college that I haven’t seen in over 20 years.  That’s amazing to me.  I realized this weekend while I was visiting my family in Michigan that I still have plenty to share.  As much as I’ve explained since I was diagnosed, and as much as I’ve described online, my dad learned a lot about T1 in the time we spent together.  He didn’t like what he saw, but I’m glad he got the extra insight.  I’m even happier that he got to see me fight through it.  You’re right Dad, my T1 is a schmuck!  I couldn’t have said it better.

It’s hard to do justice to T1 in writing sometimes, but I’ll keep trying.  On day 1 of this Diabetes Awareness month, I’m grateful I have the chance to share my stories with all of you.  Thank you for your support and your interest in hearing what I have to say.  Educate, Advocate, CURE.