Leonardo Thousand

I was diagnosed as a child when I was sleeping over at my grandma’s house and she noticed I was urinating VERY frequently. Surprisingly, that was my one and only symptom. She was concerned enough with that alone to take me to the ER considering both of my brothers had also recently been diagnosed with type one (no prior history in our family before us)! I was in DKA but they caught it in time to bring me down relatively easily. Since then, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my journey. At one point, I was severely depressed as an adolescent/teenager and my A1c was >14! I even went into a coma for three days at one point and was pulled out of multi-system organ failure. I could barely breathe or make it up stairs at such a young age and never realized just how bad I felt until I started taking better care of my diabetes. I’m now at an A1c of 5.5, the lowest since I was diagnosed, and doing better in life, both mentally and physically, than ever before! I never thought it was worth it to take proper care of myself until I did and felt like a “normal person”, something I haven’t felt since being diagnosed. I wasn’t even able to recognize I felt that way until now. I’m proud of my journey and the work it took to get here. I hope one day I can inspire or reach someone who was like me and didn’t understand just how bad it is and can get. I have moderate retinopathy in both eyes now and recently they discovered mild macular edema in my right eye. However, since getting my A1c and dramatic spikes and depressions in levels under control, the retinopathy itself hasn’t progressed! I don’t plan on losing my vision as someone in my very early 20s any time soon, but if I do, I want comfort in the fact I did everything I could while I still had time.