Dear newly diagnosed me,
You are going to be okay.
Not immediately. Not without a lot of frustration and a fair amount of crying in pharmacy parking lots. But okay. More than okay, eventually.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me in that hospital room.
Your numbers are data, not grades. The insulin dosing, the carb counting, the blood sugar readings — none of it is a test you pass or fail. It’s information you use. A high number means your body needs more insulin right now. A low means your body has too much. These are problems with solutions, not moral failures.
The medical system will sometimes treat your numbers like a performance review. Don’t let it.
You will get better at this. Right now it feels impossibly complicated. In six months it will be second nature. In a year you will forget that you ever didn’t know how to do any of it.
The learning curve is steep, but it ends. Or rather, it levels off into something you can handle.
The technology is going to get better. The CGM you’re using now will be replaced by something smaller, more accurate, and more comfortable. The insulin pump on the horizon is smarter than anything currently available. Closed-loop systems are transforming T1D management in real time. The science is moving.
What is not moving fast enough is the cost. Fight for better. Advocate. Vote. But also: don’t make your peace contingent on the system being fixed. Live well with what you have right now.
You need to tell the people closest to you. Not everyone. Not your new coworkers. Not the casual acquaintance. But your closest people — the ones who might be with you when something goes wrong — they need to know what a severe low looks like and what to do.
This is not weakness. This is preparation.
The grief is real and it’s okay. You are allowed to grieve the version of your life without this diagnosis. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to find it unfair, because it is unfair.
You are not allowed — and I say this gently — to let that grief stop your life.
Find your people. Online, in-person, wherever. Other people with T1D will understand things about your experience that the most loving, supportive non-diabetic people in your life simply cannot. You need both. Go find the former.
You have been given a condition that requires extraordinary amounts of your attention, your effort, and your resilience. That’s a lot to ask of a person.
But you are, as it turns out, up to it.
With love,
Future you