Thursday, March 31, 2011

And so it begins...

Alright, here we go... A blog.  A Diabetes blog.   I don't know the first thing about blogging, so I guess I'll start with the basics.

My name is Chelsey and I am 22 years old (almost 23!).  I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on November 27th, 2010 - yes, that means I'm a new player in this game.  My father was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1979 and he has always handled his diagnosis with dignity and pride.  I look up to him every day.  Although I would never say I'm HAPPY that he has Diabetes, I realize that it has made my own diagnosis much easier on me having already learned so much about this disease from him my entire life!

When I was first diagnosed four months ago, I felt a little alone.  Yes, my dad has Diabetes as well, but he had already spent almost 32 years learning to live with it and learning how his body reacts to different things.  He knew what worked for him but I knew I would need to find more resources to learn what options I had and what might work for me.

I spent the first few days fresh from my diagnosis googling everything I could think of in relation to Type 1 Diabetes.  I read about Lantus, Humolog, Apidra, the OmniPod, JDRF, Joslin, Eli Lilly company, best injection sites... My head was swimming!

Although Google turned up a lot of information related to Diabetes, it also turned up a lot of blogs and thread chains and communities all based around Diabetes.  It was the Diabetes Online Community.  I watched silently for a few months, reading blogs and twitter posts and everything I could find.  It amazed me that I could learn so much about this disease from other people "just like me".    I loved the DOC from the moment I learned about it and couldn't wait to be a part of it in some way.

I have been managing my Diabetes with multiple daily injections for the past four months, but had always been looking into the pump.  Very recently I've learned that I'll be able to move forward with the pump in the near future.  So I figured what better time to start a blog and test out the DOC waters.  It'll be a learning process (in many ways) but a great process to document.

Anybody else out here in blog world new to the game? Or not so new to the game but loving the DOC?  I guess we'll see how it goes!

xx,
Chelsey