Hi! My name is Corinne, and I am 13 years old.
I was diagnosed with type one diabetes when I was 9 years old, on December 22nd, 2015. My family started to notice that I was acting and looking differently. I started drinking lots of water, wetting the bed, and I was losing an unhealthy amount of weight quickly. I just wasn’t myself. My doctor misdiagnosed me and said I had a stubborn virus. So, I kept trying to do everything normally even though I felt horrible!
A few months before my diagnosis, I set a goal for myself. I wanted to donate handmade blankets to the Children’s Hospital in Colorado by December 1st. I wanted to give back to my community. I was in newspapers and TV for hosting blanket parties every other weekend and rallying the nearby schools to help. Things started to get crazy! The Children for Children organization reached out to me and I was presented with a plaque for helping other children, got to be a part of a private Katie Mahan concert, meet Debbie Turner (Marta from the Sound of Music), and started to speak at different groups. These things were wonderful things to experience, but no matter how much I smiled at the camera, something felt wrong inside. I thought this was the how I was going to feel forever: sick all the time, too skinny for my own good, crying every second, and bedwetting like a baby.
I worked hard and finally finished all the blankets for the Children’s Hospital. But in the middle of all this, my mom kept calling the doctor and explaining I wasn’t acting like myself, but they kept telling her I had a virus. This went on for a couple of weeks. My mom knew something wasn’t right with me, so when my brother told my mom I had to be taken to the doctor ASAP, my mom agreed, and we went to the urgent care center that day.
On December 22nd, I felt worse than I ever had before. When we got to the urgent care, the doctor made me take a urine test. Then the doctor hurried back into the room and said I had to go to the hospital right away. I don’t remember much because at the time, I wasn’t sure what was going on. The doctors were flooding my mom with information and she was calling my dad and brothers, breaking the news. I had type one diabetes.
We drove to one hospital that was a half-hour away. They couldn’t help me much, so they made me go to another hospital in an ambulance. They put all these IV’s in my arm, drew blood for tests, and said I couldn’t eat anything for the next 24 hours because I’ll throw it all up. I remember laying down with tubes all around me and doctors asking me if I could taste the IV liquid. I was so hungry! I was put in ICU and had nurses come check on me every 20 minutes. My mom stayed with me in the hospital and my family came to visit, but I just wanted to go home and feel better. When I was released from the hospital, I was sent to the Barbara Davis Center to learn everything we could. I got all sorts of information. My parents learned about giving me insulin and how to check my blood sugars.
Diabetes is different than what I thought it would be. Diabetes is a struggle. It’s the one thing I wish I could change, but I can’t, and that’s ok. We can either have pity for ourselves, or we can learn to live with diseases like type 1 diabetes. I choose to believe life is still good. I know someday, there will be a cure for type 1 diabetes and that gives me hope.
