I’m 15 years old and I am currently in 10th grade. When I was five on august 11th 2004 I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. When I was diagnosed it was frightening at first. I didn’t know anything about diabetes or what I was going to have to do because of it. My parents started giving me insulin shots and pricking my fingers for blood checks. For a few months I had to be woken up in the middle of the night to do blood checks.

When I started to recover my parents took me to an endocrinologist. He came up with a formula that I would use to cover my carbs. It took a while, but my family and I started to get used to our new routine.

Now, I perform at the cocoa village play house, attend gifted every week, and play the saxophone. Diabetes has just added to my every-day life. I’ve been on the Omni pod since I was nine so I can stay active.

Since I was diagnosed my friends, family, and I have attended the JDRF walk to cure diabetes annually. Every one helps so we can raise money for research. We all enjoy the walk and how much it gives us hope of finding a cure.

I also go to diabetes camp every year at Lake Winona. I have so many friends there because they all understand what I have to go through. What is sad is that more and more kids are being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes every year.

I just wanted to share a rough generalization of my experiences. This is a rewrite of something I wrote as and 11 year old and I wanted to keep the base structure of it. Thus, the poor sentence structure and odd subject changing. All that has been changed are the ages.