dear du members who are diabetic.

[SCantiGOP]

11. My 25 year old daughter became Type 1 at 6

The doctor explained then how important glucose (blood sugar) control was.
He pointed out that infections need fuel to grow, and that fuel in the body is sugar. So a routine sore for someone else can be inhibited from healing due to excess sugar in the body. And the circulation is slower in the extremities, meaning fewer white blood cells to heal the wound.

My daughter took over management of her diabetes before she hit her teen years. Checking her blood sugar, calculating carb ratios and intakes and giving herself thousands of shots. Now she wears a Continuous Glucose Meter that reads her levels every few minutes and lets her know of trends and whether she is getting high or low. It all runs through her smart phone, and even calculates her background insulin amounts and any extra she needs when the glucose is increasing without shots. Both the insulin pump and her CGM are attached to her, and replaced every few days.

From the time she was about ten she said she wanted to be a diabetes nurse. She started two years ago at the biggest hospital chain in a city of 700,000 people, and was promoted last year to Inpatient Diabetes Educator. That means she is the nurse who does for newly diagnosed patients (90% are pre-puberty) what a nurse did for her about two decades ago.
She makes a great salary and does what she really loves and cares about, and her Dad couldn't be prouder of her.