Who I am & How This Story Began

My name is Maddie. I am 22 years old, and I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in December of 2014, just after my eleventh birthday.

Type one diabetes has taught me a lot over the last eleven years, a lot about myself, my values, and my body. Type 1 diabetes can be a lonely disease, but it doesn’t have to be.

The goal of this blog is to connect people living with type one diabetes, as well as the loved ones who walk alongside them. I want this space to be a place where no one feels alone. I've met type one diabetics of all ages and at every stage of life, and every single one of them has a voice that deserves to be heard.

I want everyone who wants to be heard to be heard -- in a way that honors their story and their voice.

So here we go. I'll start with mine.

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On December 30, 2014, just two days before the new year and twenty-seven days after my eleventh birthday, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

It started as a completely normal day. Nothing felt urgent. Nothing felt wrong.

Around 7:00 that morning, my mom came into my room to wake me up and asked if I wanted to go with her to her hair appointment. I was unusually tired and still half asleep, so I told her I’d stay home and see her when she got back.

What neither of us knew was that when she returned, I would still be asleep.

My mom got home around 11:00 a.m., and I was still in bed. Still exhausted. Still unable to get up. That alone was enough to worry her — I was an eleven-year-old who didn’t sleep in, especially not until late morning. Something felt off.

That said, my family was the kind that made you know the difference between being hurt and being injured. An injury meant medical attention. Being hurt was something you worked through. There wasn’t much space in between.

So instead of panicking, my mom did what moms do. She decided to get me up and feed me.

Leftover pizza seemed like a good idea — heavy on carbohydrates, little to no protein. I ate it without complaint, hoping it would fix whatever was wrong.

It didn’t.

Instead, I wandered into my mom’s home office and laid down on the floor, still in my polka-dot pajamas, and fell asleep again. Noon came and went.

That’s when my mom knew something was wrong.

How could an active, energetic eleven-year-old be asleep on the floor in the middle of the day?

As she sat there, she started replaying the last few weeks in her mind. I had been unusually tired. Slower. Less like myself. She had chalked it up to laziness, growing pains, or attitude — normal kid stuff.

I was a devoted soccer player. I loved the sport, but I hated being yelled at. One game in particular stood out. I played badly — really badly — and when my mom confronted me afterward, I broke down in tears. I tried to explain that I couldn’t help it, that I didn’t know what was wrong, that I felt empty and exhausted.

At the time, it sounded like excuses.

On December 30, 2014, it started to sound like something else.

After sitting with it for a while, my mom decided to take me to my pediatrician. It was a random Tuesday during Christmas break, but thankfully, there was an opening. Before I really understood what was happening, we were out the door and on our way.

I never liked doctors’ offices. I’d been diagnosed with hypothyroidism when I was five, so they weren’t unfamiliar, but that didn’t make them any less intimidating. I hated the cold rooms, the needles, the waiting.

Little did I know how familiar they would become.

By the time we arrived — around 1:00 p.m. — I was struggling to stay awake. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy, like they weighed a hundred pounds each. I remember fighting sleep in the waiting room, my head drooping no matter how hard I tried to stay alert.

Eventually, my name was called.

We were brought into a small exam room — stark white walls, light-brown cabinets, and dark floral chairs for parents. I still remember how cold it felt. My mom and I sat quietly, looking at the family photos on the walls.

A nurse came in first. She checked my weight and my temperature, all the usual things. Then she pricked my finger.

She said she was checking my blood sugar.

I had never had that done before.

When the doctor came in, she already had an answer.

She explained that I had a disease called type 1 diabetes, that the beta cells in my pancreas were no longer producing insulin. She explained that insulin is the hormone that moves glucose from the blood into storage so the body can use it for energy later. Without insulin, the body is starved of energy and begins breaking down fat instead.

As the doctor talked, my mom’s eyes scanned my body.

My shoulders. My back. My face.

She noticed things she hadn’t fully noticed before — how my shoulder blades stuck out, how thin I looked, how tired I was. I looked weak.

I was weak.

It was hard for her to look at me without crying, but suddenly everything made sense.

As the doctor continued explaining what type one diabetes actually meant, the weight of it started to settle in — not just emotionally, but physically.

Insulin isn’t optional. It isn’t something the body can work around.

Without insulin, glucose builds up in the bloodstream instead of getting into cells where it’s supposed to be used for energy. The body is essentially starving, even while surrounded by sugar. In response, it starts breaking down fat and muscle to survive, producing acids called ketones in the process. Over time, this can become dangerous, even life-threatening.

It explained everything.

Why was I always exhausted? Why couldn’t I finish soccer games? Why didn’t food help? Why did my body feel hollow?

My blood sugar that day was dangerously high, and my body had been running without insulin for longer than anyone realized. What looked like laziness or attitude was actually my body trying to keep itself alive.

After the diagnosis, things moved quickly.

Instead of going home, we were sent to another doctor’s office — a pediatric endocrinology clinic — where the real conversation began. That afternoon, my world shifted from what’s wrong to this is forever.

We were all in the room together: my mom, my dad, my stepdad, my stepmom, and me. I remember thinking it was strange to see everyone there at once, united by something that had suddenly become very real. We stayed for hours — nearly four — talking about what life was going to look like now.

We talked about insulin injections. About blood sugar checks.About counting carbohydrates.About emergency lows and dangerous highs.

About school, sports, sleepovers, birthdays, and holidays.

Words like lifelong, chronic, and management floated through the room, even if I didn’t fully understand them yet. I was eleven. I didn’t grasp the magnitude of what was happening — but I could feel it. I could feel that nothing was going to be simple again.

I sat there quietly most of the time, listening as adults asked questions I didn’t yet know to ask. How often would I need insulin? What happens if my blood sugar drops too low? Could I still play soccer? Would this ever go away?

The answer to that last question was no.

Type 1 diabetes doesn’t have a cure. It doesn’t take days off. It doesn’t care how old you are or what plans you had. It demands attention, every single day, for the rest of your life.

That afternoon marked the beginning of my “new normal.”

A normal that included needles and numbers. A normal that required planning for things other kids didn’t have to think about. A normal that would eventually teach me resilience, awareness, and discipline — even when I didn’t want to learn those lessons.

I didn’t leave that office scared so much as changed. I walked in as a tired, confused kid. I walked out as a kid with a diagnosis, a routine, and a responsibility I didn’t ask for.

And I wasn’t alone — even though, at times, it would feel that way.