At 23 years old, I was relearning how to live with a disease I’d had since I was seven. This was not the first time I’d been instructed on diabetes management, but it was the first time I was hearing about it from someone who’d been living with Type 1 diabetes herself. I took what she said and ate it up like the carbohydrates she was teaching me to count.
“If only we didn’t have to eat,” I told Kim, the diabetic educator, as she was placing a small white shell of a device under the skin on my stomach. She laughed. The shell, a continuous glucose monitor, was going to perform a three-day test to gauge whether I was doing a good job managing my blood sugar—and controlling my diabetes.
The thing is, I have to count carbohydrates. If it’s not listed on the nutrition label, I have to estimate. A small apple has about 15 carbs, a regular banana 45. But what about that pasta from Barnelli’s or those mouth-watering rainbow cones on the south side? It’s a trial-and-error game I play.
