Hiii everyone! I’m Amelia, and I’m SO excited to be joining the Type One Together team as a social media intern. I’m from Pennsylvania and next year I’ll be moving to Rochester, NY to attend college. I’m currently taking a gap year and focusing a lot on entrepreneurship, as well as working on internships in marketing and social media. I have always wanted to work with a company that focuses on type 1 diabetes, and I am so, so excited to work with the diabetes community through TOT!
Now for the diabetes stuff: I was diagnosed with t1d when I was four, and luckily I don’t have a crazy diagnosis story. My parents noticed I was drinking a lot more water than usual and brought me to the doctor, where I was diagnosed with a blood sugar of less than 200mg/dL. I’ve had t1d for 14 years and I currently use a dexcom g6 cgm and omnipod with a diy loop system!
I can’t wait to connect with all of you here and on the Type One Together social media!
For now, I want to share 5 things t1d has taught me:
Community is everything.
Meeting others who get what you’re going through is one of the best feelings! I love chatting with diabuddies and sharing both exciting and frustrating diabetes stuff with someone who gets it. Plus, the diabetes online community has so many great tips to make life with diabetes just a little bit easier!
Things don’t always go as planned (+ always be extra prepared!)
We all know that diabetes doesn’t act the same hour to hour or day to day. I try to plan ahead as much as I can—this way I can bring low snacks, set a temp basal, or prebolus if needed.! I also pack wayyyy too much anytime I leave the house. I would always rather have too many diabetes supplies than not enough.
You can choose your mindset (+ how you look at t1d)
For most of my diagnosis, I was fairly neutral in how I looked at diabetes. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, it was just kind of there. When I started taking better care of my diabetes, I was constantly frustrated and burnt out. I’ve learned to have a more positive mindset when it comes to diabetes (shoutout to t1d mindset coaching with Raquel!). If I have a bad blood sugar, I now try to choose to not let it ruin my whole day. Sometimes it still does and that’s ok! But a shift in mindset can make a HUGE difference in t1d management.
It’s ok to have a bad day.
I always used to push through, no matter if my blood sugar was high or low. It is ok to acknowledge and rest if your high or low blood sugar symptoms are making you feel crappy. Diabetes can be rough some days, and it’s ok to give in to that! I definitely had to, and continue to, work on this one myself. I have had to take the day off of work because of a night of crazy blood sugars and no sleep, or sit down and wait for a low blood sugar to come up before moving on with my day. While this is not always fun, it’s important to be ok with having a bad day, because they are inevitable with t1d!
Your mental wellbeing is just as important as your physical wellbeing.
It took me a while to learn this one because I feel like diabetes is mostly talked about as a physical disease. I think it is so important to recognize that we are constantly thinking about and managing this condition, something most people never have to deal with. It’s like an extra full time job! It’s so important to make
sure to acknowledge how you’re doing with the mental highs and lows as well as the physical highs and lows.
I hope at least one of these resonated with you!! Share with us something t1d has taught you below 👇
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