Hello, my name is Michelle. I was first diagnosed with diabetes in April 2000. It was the most horrifying moment of my life. My thoughts were about how I am going to manage as I was a big-time junk food eater, and most of the time, I still am.
I have the food police on my trail 24 hours a day. Boy, do they irritate me. I try so hard to maintain. I am a teacher of 39 years teaching preschool. Diabetes is so deep in my family (grandmother, mother, and aunt who is deceased, two aunts, two uncles, two sisters, one cousin, my daughter, and myself are living with diabetes).
I was 19 months old when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Living in a small rural town in South Carolina, the medical knowledge for juvenile diabetes was not progressive, so my mother moved north to the Washington, DC, area to bring me to an advanced endocrinologist who specialized in juvenile diabetes. It was determined that my onset of diabetes was from a viral infection. Here I am, 58 years of age, living with other onsets from diabetes like heart disease, hypothyroidism, kidney disease, diabetic retinopathy, neuropathy, and GERD to say the least.
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