Age: 27 Year Diagnosed: 2017 Location: Philadelphia, PA
“I have 2 close family members who have Type 1 Diabetes. After I was diagnosed I was in complete shock about how much I didn’t know about Type 1. They both choose to keep their diabetes private. They find bathrooms to do injections and finger pokes, so naturally I thought that was “normal”. I remember my first public diabetes encounter was on an airplane two days after I was diagnosed. I was sitting in the middle seat with one of my nanny kids sleeping to the right of me and a lady sitting to the left of me. I was hungry and had to make a decision between waking a sleeping toddler to go to the bathroom to check my blood sugar and give an insulin injection or suck it up and do everything in front of a complete stranger. I chose to wake the sleeping toddler and go into the bathroom. However, I quickly realized that method was not going to work for me and slowly became more and more comfortable with doing all things diabetes in public. I now love having natural opportunities to educate people. It usually only takes one injection, finger prick, or wearing my medical device in plane site to get a conversation started.”