Personal Narrative: Living With Diabetes

n Mendenhall et al.’s, Speaking Through Diabetes, the authors examine how social suffering may be embodied in diabetes using Kleinman’s concept of cultural narrative. They consider how epidemics achieve social significance, through patient experience and symbolism in everyday narrative. Patients tell their illness narratives to explain their suffering to others but also use narratives to make sense of illness experience for themselves. The use of explanatory models and beliefs about an illness helps patients makes sense of the illness in a particular context. As Mendenhall et al. highlight, Mexican explanatory models often identify stress and extreme emotion as the main cause of diabetes.

I fight for my health every day in ways most people do not understand I lay in bed struggling just to get up in the morning only to get faced with a new day of troubles. All I think about is the day that being a normal eighteen year old ended for me. I was responsible went to work every day, and was trying to figure out my first year of college until everything was flipped upside down.

When my husband was first diagnosed with Type Two Diabetes, I was extremely overwhelmed. There were visits to his doctor, a nutritionist, and Diabegtes classes. he had to take medication, and also give himself insulin injections twice a day.

When I was five, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Even though this was a truly terrible event in my life, there were people who were extremely helpful to me. Obviously, my parents, other family, and friends helped me through the situation, but I am eternally grateful to the nurses. They made me feel like everything was going to be ok as it was happening in the moment. They were the reason I made it through the ordeal. Since then, I could always picture myself going into nursing so that one day, I can be that same trusted support system for someone else.

Living with a chronic condition not only effects the individual, but it effects the entire family. An adolescent living with a chronic health condition not only depends on their family for support, but also on support from their friends, classmates, and healthcare team (Rostami, Parsa-Yekta, Najafi Ghezeljeh, & Vanaki, 2014). Supporting an individual with a chronic disease leaves an emotional impact and can be financially straining as well. Families living with a sick child must find strategies to cope. Whether the coping strategies utilized are positive or negative, they leave a lasting effect on the entire family, as well as the child living with the condition (Woodson, Thakkar, Burbage, Kichler, & Nabors, 2015). Involvement of the parents in this situation is vital to the child’s future success in managing their illness (Landers, Friedrich, Jawad, & Miller, 2016). This paper will explore one family’s story of living with, and coping with, a child who has recently been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

In this paper, I chose to do a how to on something that I hold dearest to my heart. Which is how to be a diabetic. I’m 18 and I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of things that I never in a million years thought I’d have to deal with. It’s nice to share this information others any chance I get to just spread awareness. Some people may think that this couldn’t happen to them, but if your careless about your health. It could happen to anyone.

When I woke up on April 3rd, 2011, I didn’t expect that later in the day, my whole life would be changed forever. I was aware, however that something was wrong.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The horror of it. She’s gone. I never thought in a million years it’d end like that. A stroke? After beating cancer, not once, but twice. Seriously? The doctors said she’d never wake up, never talk, never recognize me. Why bother keeping her on life support? It’s not her. My dad told us “she’s not going to make it.” My brother, dropping, fell to his knees. A guy 6’2” 220, lost it. That day ruined our family. Mom was the glue, the one who intervened when my dad went military on us. The one who always had your back and took care of us. But now, because of a nation’s lackadaisical attitude towards type two diabetes, she’s dead.

With the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, the importance of teaching patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes how to manage their disease while maintaining their personhood is vital. Personhood is defined simply as “the quality or condition of being an individual person” (OED Online, 2016). While the definition may be simple, the idea it encompasses is significant, and is one nurses need to consider. Protecting a patient’s individuality while treating within a standard care model can be challenging. Failing to do so can result in patient non-compliance with their diabetes management, and increase their likelihood of cardiac, vascular, and neurological diseases (Lahiri, 2016, p. 116, Phillips, 2016, pp. 536-537). Individualizing patient teaching, assessing and encouraging healthy eating and exercise habits, and identifying and remediating factors which decrease a patient’s medication compliance, can assist in helping patients stay compliant with their treatment while preserving their personhood.

Imagine pricking your fingers with a needle five times a day. As a type 1 diabetic, this is a reality for me. My fingertips are callused and scarred. I was frustrated that after years of having diabetes, there wasn’t an easier way to check my blood sugar. I scoured Google Scholar for alternatives and I found a contact lens technology that would be capable of checking sugar levels using only tears. This would eliminate the need to prick my fingers for blood! If an unassuming tear could simplify diabetes care, what else the eye was capable of? My curiosity led me to volunteer as an optometry intern for blind motivational speaker Nancy Solari. Nancy is based in California and I live in Maryland, so I was a remote intern, communicating with Nancy

James is taking his daughter Lily to the park. He looks down at his outstretched hand, grasping her little fingers. As he looks into her beautiful blue eyes, he imagines all the years he will have with her. James and Lily finally reach the park and Lily darts over to the swings, as usual. She hops on her favorite swing and eagerly waits for her lethargic father. Once James reaches the swings, he gives a little push. Lily squeals, “higher, daddy, higher!” James pushes her a little harder as she screams with delight again. Suddenly he is thirsty and has a hard time seeing. James has type two diabetes. He has to be there for Lily. For her graduation, her wedding, and even to meet his grandchildren. To gain a greater

Despite my parent's divorce, I led a contented life. My dad lived in the outskirts of Denver, but his distance never kept him from maintaining an active role in my life. Back in Colorado Springs, I lived with my mom, little sister, and step-father. Growing up, I never felt that I truly fit in with any of my friends or even my family; like almost any other teenager, I felt awkward in my own skin. However, my focus quickly shifted away from myself. In November of 2013, my mother learned that she had Pancreatic Cancer. My bubble of protection from the world's problems promptly burst as I heard the diagnosis. My family did our research only to discover that the statistics were horrifying. The five-year survival rate for someone with any stage

There were events in my life that impact my career in a good way. During my childhood I was living with my grandfather, he was raising me along with my mother and my other cousins. We used to be a very close family, but it was a time were my grandfather started to get very sick. Of course, since I was a child, I remembered I was never enough years old. My mother did not want to let me know that my grandfather had diabetes, and due to all the complications that diabetes causes a dialysis should be done prompted.

Every year, 15,000 children and 15, 000 adults are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (T1D), which totals to 30,000 people. In the United States, as many as 3 million people have T1D. T1D is managed with insulin throughout the day. Some warning signs of T1D include extreme thirst, frequent urination, drowsiness, sudden weight loss, fruity odor on the breath and especially sugar in urine (Type 1 Diabetes Facts). You never know, three million is a giant number that you, or someone you know, could be included in. Type 1 diabetes makes for a totally new lifestyle that calls for constant acknowledgement, with no cure so far; however, you can still live a full and active life by becoming more aware of the disease.

September 3rd, 2010. Quite an utterly unassuming day for most. On this day, I am eleven years old and I have a doctor’s appointment. I heaved myself out of my restful bed, and my stomach grumbled and protested along with me. The doctors previously informed me not to eat following midnight, and my absolute favorite meal is breakfast, so I was not too fond of this advice. Ravenous was the only word to describe how I was feeling. After proceeding through the motions of readying myself for the day ahead, I loaded into the car with my mother, and off we went. My mother’s face was haggard with perturbation, and her fingers gripped the steering wheel with a ferocity I had never distinguished before. She was petrified. I was too, but the