adminYemurai Machirori Features Correspondent
Ten years is hardly the biggest milestone, but as a young person managing diabetes, it has offered me valuable insights into the condition, and more importantly, it has given me a chance to interact and influence other young people across the world, as a member of an international body of young leaders with diabetes.
When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I had had symptoms for months but I had not gone to the doctor until I was 25kg, had blurry vision and couldn’t sit in class for more than 10 minutes because I had to go pee.
The news that I had type 1 diabetes was a relief in one sense, knowing I wasn’t really on the brink of death but above all, because they finally knew what was wrong with me and could treat me accordingly.
I however cannot say that it was all relief and no worry for both me and my family at that time, well maybe worry on my part but devastation for my family because of the age that I was diagnosed at and maybe because of the fact that I had become somehow “different” from my friends and generally, most children my age. My terrible physical condition had become real to me. It finally had a name, diabetes.
To everyone who knew me, it eventually made sense, it meant that I wasn’t just “skinny” from not eating or being too selective over what I ate but because I was sick, and this time, I was not going to be cured, ever.
The only option I had was to manage the condition because it would always be there. Life was now life with Type 1 diabetes.
The fact that I was growing up in a family where diabetes was already present made it a whole lot easier for me to adjust my life. I had seen my mother taking shots ever since I was a baby and now, the baton had been passed on to me, not to my siblings but to me.
I vowed that I would do whatever I could to help other children who suffered from diabetes and found it difficult to accept the condition, got bullied because of it or otherwise got blamed by society for having diabetes.
I realised in my young age that diabetes had somehow gone from being something I had to being something I was and always will be. When that happened, I was different. I hadn’t been cured but I was better.
I had promised myself when I was diagnosed that diabetes wouldn’t change me, but it did, and despite the hardship, I can safely say that I’m happy it did. Having diabetes has changed the way I eat and even the way I handle myself. It has even motivated me to do things I never thought I could do. Diabetes has made me re-evaluate my life. I look at things in a different way. I have an entirely new sense of what’s important.
Over the past years, I have also discovered a parallel world of diabetes that I wasn’t well acquainted with when I was first diagnosed with diabetes.
Then, I felt totally alone but now I know there is a world full of inspiring people with diabetes, people I am lucky to work with, people I haven’t met, but inspire me to do better and to be stronger every day. I am a part of a community based around a disease which somehow seems to be a healthier community than most.
After ten years of living with type 1 diabetes I no longer remember what life was like without diabetes. After a decade of insulin, glucose meters, high and low blood sugars, constantly thinking about diabetes in some way or another I don’t feel like I know otherwise.
I feel that children and young adults with diabetes cope and manage themselves better when they have full support from their parents, families and the people that surround them generally. Parents contribute a huge part in their children`s control even though they might not see it. It is important therefore for parents with diabetic children to be able to walk with their children through their journey, and helping them to embrace the disease. Experience has also taught me that the community plays a very important role in the management of this condition, especially where a child in concerned. To me, it is important for community to not only see the negative in diabetes or how it will “destroy” a child`s life but instead take a step towards learning about the disease and how they can instead help the person affected by it.
I can safely conclude that it is still difficult to say that I’m happy to have type one diabetes but I can see the good in it. I can see the good in me through what I have achieved and how much level of responsibility and confidence this disease has given me. Maybe what I really meant when I said diabetes would not change me was that I wouldn’t use it as an excuse to not do things or let it hold me back from being the best person I can possibly be, or let alone, stop me from reaching for the stars . If anything, I do so much more because I have diabetes, I give more too.
Yemurai Machirori is an Ambassador for Diabetes in Zimbabwe (recognised as Young Leaders in Diabetes by the International Diabetes Federation).
Online Reporter