My name is Chris Bishop and I was Diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes on Christmas eve 1987. My story starts a few months before this when I began to show the tell tale signs of Diabetes. Because, at the time, I was only 14 years old and did not know anyone with Diabetes, I really didn’t think much of it but it was my mother who began to wonder. I was constantly thirsty and drinking anything I could get my hands on. I would go through gallons of milk each week and I frequented the water fountain at school. Going along with my insatiable thirst was my frequent urination. One thing that my mom and I can both remember very well before my diagnosis was when we were going shopping at a shoe store and every 15 minutes, I was having to go to the bathroom. Also, I had issues with wetting my bed up until my diagnosis. This, while not only unusual for someone of my age was also very embarrassing, especially when sleeping at a friends house. With these symptoms, my mom brought me to my Pediatrician so he could check things out. After this appointment, this is when my life changed.
On Christmas Eve of 1987, I was on my paper route with my grandfather. While I was out on my route, my mom received a call from my doctor saying that I needed to go to the hospital because my blood glucose was extremely high. So we headed to the Emergency room and it was found that I had a blood glucose of almost 700. This is when I learned about the world of Diabetes. I spent 4 days in the hospital before being released. I learned to give myself injections and test my blood. Now considering this was more than 20 years ago, Insulin pumps were not even mentioned and Humalin R and NPH were what I was given for my insulin. There were no options for me. It was, “this is what you have to take and this is how you do it.” I took everything in stride as I always had and still do to this day. I did not get overly upset or go into any type of denial or depression. I just kept on living my life.
In the years following, surprisingly, my routine and diet really did not change very much. Other than now taking insulin before breakfast, before dinner and at bedtime, along with testing at these times as well, I tried to live as normal a life as possible. There was no counting carbs, only adjusting my insulin according to my blood glucose reading. Never was what I was eating taken into account. I look back at this now and realize that my methods and approach to managing my diabetes was not in the best interest of my health and well-being. One of the biggest problems is that while I was educated about what Diabetes was and what I needed to do to stay alive, I was never given any direction on how to improve my quality of life. More frequent blood tests, better diet and just getting more information about what was going on in the world according to diabetes just wasn’t made known to me. I contribute a lot of this to the fact that I never switched my doctor to an Endocrinologist. I stayed with our family doctor until I graduated high school and only went to see him on a yearly basis.
Within the first few years after my Diagnosis, I had the opportunity to go to a 2 day Diabetes education class held at University of San Francisco. This was really my first true experience of truly managing my Diabetes, not just living with it. I learned about foods and their effect in relation to Diabetes, the short and long term effects of Diabetes and new technologies and advances in the world of Diabetes. This is when I started using an Insulin Pen.
After taking the Diabetes Education class, I continued on with my life as I had been up to this point. While I had stepped up in my technology advances, I did not follow the same path on my testing and diet. While my doctors visits each year were not particularly bad my A1c tests never fell in the 7% or lower range. As I reached to college, it was time for me to live life on my own. This is something that I didn’t give a second thought to and moved on to college just like any other 18 year old kid did. The one thing that did change was my attention to my Diabetes. While at home, I had a structured routine and my mother and father to make sure that I tested my blood before each meal and at bed, but once I college arrived, that all flew out the window. I would rarely, if ever, test my blood. I would give myself my insulin before each meal and at bedtime but I would actually base the amount of insulin on what I was eating and how I felt. If I was eating a bunch of food like pasta or pizza (which were 2 of my favorites) I would give myself more insulin. If I was having a smaller meal, I would give myself less. There was absolutely no accuracy or method to my madness. While this was not a good way of managing my Diabetes, I made it through my college and post college days without every falling into a Diabetic episode. This was 100% luck because if I were to do that today, I would not be here to write this.
After college, a few things in my life changed. 1) I moved from San Francisco to Kansas City 2) I got married and 3) my view and attitude about diabetes changed. I moved from California because I needed a change in my life. My mom had already moved to the Midwest and she knew that I wanted a change so she asked me to come live with her until I could get established. I toke the invitation and transplanted myself to Kansas City. After living in Kansas City for almost 2 years I met the woman who who eventually become my wife. This is the woman who I owe my change is attitude and perspective when it comes to Diabetes.
After being together for almost 18 months, my wife (Fiance at the time), her 2 1/2 year old daughter and myself had a huge scare in the form of a Diabetic episode. It was early in the morning and our daughter came into our room while we were still sleeping to climb into bed with us. When she does this, she will normally push me to move over so that she can sleep between us. Well, this morning I would not move. She was pushing , jumping on me and yelling at me to move over and wake up but I was not responding. She then went over to my wife and say “Mommy, Daddy won’t wake up” With that, my wife tried without success so she jumped up and called 911. The EMTs arrived and brought me back to consciousness. After regaining consciousness, my blood glucose test showed that I had a blood glucose of 28. This was after getting some juice in me. After this episode, my wife told me that I really needed to start taking care of my Diabetes because I now had a family and she didn’t want her or our daughter to deal with this or worst again. With that things changed.
After the episode, I went and found a doctor that I began seeing every 3 months. I later found an Endocrinologist that really opened my eyes to Diabetes and what I needed to do in order to live with Diabetes. It was at this point that I began doing research on the internet about Diabetes. I began finding websites and blog about diabetes, social networks and an entire online community related to Diabetes. This really interested me. I have a graphic design degree and am a tech junkie, so seeing all of the website and information on the web about Diabetes got me thinking about starting my own blog. With that, The Big “D” was born. I began posting about my daily life and about any information I found on the web about Diabetes. This also helped me in researching insulin pumps which my Endocrinologist thought I would be a good candidate for. In addition to my blog I started joining and contributing to every Diabetes social network that I could find. I just soaked it all up like a sponge I could not get enough of it.
This brings me to the present. I have just recently participated in my 2nd StepOut: Walk to Fight Diabetes Fundraiser and raised almost $1300.00. I am also looking to try start up a local support group in the Kansas City area for Type 1 Diabetics. I hope to get this up because there is not much available in the area for support groups, especially for type 1 Diabetics. I plan, once I am able to get things going, to have a website up, Called livinwithdiabetes.com, that will be focused on people with Diabetes in the Kansas City area. I hope to include a variety of things such as information about Diabetes, links and resources in the area, meets and minutes of past meetings, topics for future meetings and even a mini-blog.
