Anders's Story

After a long baseball practice in the spring my sophomore year of high school, my mom had noticed that I had been unbelievably thirsty for the past few weeks. Me being me, a stubborn high school kid who only cared about sports and his friends, I blew off her thought to take me to the doctors as an over protective mom worrying too much about her kid. But just a few days later, my world had changed. I was now a Type 1 diabetic. I didn’t know what it meant for me and my beloved sports, or how it would change my life, all I knew was that I had to be in the children’s hospital for the next day or so. To say that I was angry and sad was an understatement. But most of all, I was scared. I was scared because of all of the unknown. I think that was the biggest hurdle for me to overcome, to accept the fact that there are certain things that are out of our control. I didn’t know why or how I had gotten diabetes, all I knew is that I now had it. Once you accept that and move on to thinking more about how you are going to attack the problem and less about why the problem came up, the better your life will be. My reality, and the reality of millions of other kids, is that we are type 1 diabetics and as of right now there is nothing we can do to change that. However, there are a bunch of things that are in my control like eating right and exercising. Once you chose to focus on that, the known, instead of all of the unknown, you will have taken a step in the right direction and overcome the biggest hurdle there is. There are only so many things we can control in life and in diabetes, so why not focus on the things you can.

Anders Hill