This
week, I started taking an honors chemistry class at Northwestern University
where I’ll be living and studying for three weeks. I was very excited to start
this course, but also very nervous about how I’d manage my diabetes while away
from home. Although I’d been away from home before, I’d never been away with
completely new people for this length of time. While packing, I filled half of
my suitcase with extra pump supplies, syringes, 4 bottles of insulin, 9 bottles
of strips, and extra CGM supplies! The whole time while packing, I was
wondering how I was going to do on my own. Although I am confident in my
abilities to manage my own diabetes, I was scared about the possibility that
something might go wrong and it would be up to me to fix it. The worst part of
it, however, was the fear of telling the teacher and teaching assistant about
my diabetes. Even though it is not a big deal, it always makes me nervous to
tell people that I have diabetes. Sometimes, people don’t understand or they
make a big deal out of it or, worse, they treat me completely differently than
they treat other people. But, when I told my teacher, she asked a couple of
questions about what exactly I needed and then told me that anything I had to
do was perfectly okay! And, so far, camp is going great and there have been no
diabetes problems! This has been a great lesson for me that sometimes it’s
scary to tell others that you have diabetes or it’s scary to think about the
worst that can happen in regards to diabetes, but everything always works out
okay in the end.
