Kristine Baum

Ah, the early days of my Type 1 journey… I was diagnosed in 1971 when I was 9 1/2 years old. Every morning my mother would boil the glass syringe and plunger in a pot on the stove in preparation for my once daily NPH insulin shot. The needles were disposable at that time, but the syringes were not. And peeing on strips of test paper to find out what your blood sugar was 3 hours ago! Plus, diet instruction was a joke. Food Exchange values, etc. Plus, I was told that fruit sugar was okay to eat and honey, sparingly. So I ate a lot of bananas and other fruits, and drank glasses of orange juice. Yikes! My blood sugars must have been crazy. However without blood glucose monitors, how was I to know? My first blood glucose monitor I bought in 1984 I believe. Fast forward to different insulins, and then a pump, and then the keloids I would develop at the sites of my infusion sets… I am still waiting for the cure for T1 diabetes. Being told (as a teenager) I should not ever get pregnant because of my T1 diabetes was sad, but I understood that if I did indeed have kids, the risks to me and the children would be too great. I would be “polluting the gene pool” with my inherited fatal disease. So, it was not too difficult for me to accept my fate. Also, my parents were told in 1971 that I would not likely live past forty years old. Well, I have checked my blood sugars often over the years, and with two different insulins, I am trying to beat the odds. I still want a cure. I don’t want more ways to check and monitor, and different insulins and different meds. I still want a cure, not just treatment. Sigh. Still I hope. Big Pharma gets so much money off of this disease. I think of all the money my parents and I have had to spend over my lifetime so I could be able to live. I am still “above the grass”, and I am so thankful for that fact.