Madison’s Story

I was diagnosed when I was just 4 years old, right after both my older brother and cousin had been diagnosed. I am going to be turning 20 this year. Almost a whole 16 years living with Type One Diabetes and oh boy has it been a journey. A journey that I am honestly looking forward to continue.

Growing up I always tended to wonder why I was “different” from the other kids. Why did I have to wait to eat my snack? Why can’t I go on that field trip? These questions lingered with me as a child and throughout my early teenage years. I felt angered at the world for giving me this auto immense disease. I just wanted to be “normal”.

Now that I am 20 and have the most supportive medical team, family, and friends I now understand why. It took me a while to understand but now I know and see how much strength I really have. When the bad days where I have extreme lows and highs and all I want to do is lay in bed, I get up and still go to class with a smile on my face and deal with my blood glucose as I go through out the day. I continue to workout, dance, and love my life to the fullest! Because I certainly am not letting this disease control my life.

I often thought that I cannot be the only one who had been struggling with seeing the light of this disease. So I took to the well known app “TikTok” and began creating diabetics related content. From videos showing how I change my sites to diabetic humor that we could all laugh to!

This disease has been such a large part of my life mentally and physically and I am currently in college to go into fundraising for Type One Diabetes organizations. The one goal in my life is to inspire and motivate others. Our “different” is what makes us special💙

Madison Poulin