Type 1 Diabetics speak out for Diabetes Awareness Month

People with Type 1 diabetes are using Diabetes Awareness Month to clear up the differences between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Once referred to as juvenile diabetes, Type 1 is being diagnosed more often in adults and difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes is becoming an important distinction both socially and medically.

The idea that Type 1 diabetes and Type 2 diabetes are the same condition is far more common than most people would think, even among medical professionals.

Joy Rabin was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was four years old and has found that, as she got older, it got harder to find a good medical team.

“One endocrinologist asked me repeatedly if I was absolutely sure I was Type 1,” she said in a face to face interview on Nov. 19.

“They think we are magically cured or evaporate when we turn 18, I guess,” she added.

The medical difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes can be confusing for people not directly affected by either disease.

The Diabetes Centre Calgary (DCC) defines Type 1 diabetes as an autoimmune disease where the body’s defenses attack the cells that make insulin.

The body loses the ability to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood, leaving the person at risk of severe complications and death without insulin therapy.

Type 2 diabetes happens much slower, according to DCC, and involves the body developing a resistance to insulin.

This resistance eventually overworks the pancreas if it goes untreated.

Type 2 diabetes can be treated with diet and exercise or oral medication if it is caught early, and patients do not necessarily need to be prescribed injected insulin. 

Type 1 diabetics are dependent on injected insulin for the rest of their lives, regardless of lifestyle, and it has no cure.

According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), nearly 10 per cent of all people with diabetes in Canada have Type 1 diabetes.

The face of that 10 per cent is not what it used to be either. 

Kelley Bradley was diagnosed originally with Type 2 diabetes at age 36, but when treatments designed for Type 2 didn’t make a difference in her health, she was retested and diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. 

She had to request the antibody testing that can determine if the body’s immune system is the cause of the problem.

Her misdiagnosis lasted three months.

“It’s so frustrating when you know something’s wrong but nobody will listen to you,” she said in an email interview. 

Bradley said that the frustration often comes from those around her that mean well, but are misinformed or confused. 

“This disease wasn’t caused by something I did and cannot be cured by fad diets,” added Bradley.

Kay Braaten was diagnosed in 1997 at the age of 22. Her frustrations come more with the unpredictability of the disease itself. 

She said that even medical professionals trained specifically to help diabetics don’t really get how difficult and time consuming the management of this disease can be.

“One day you can eat something and be fine, the next day you eat the same thing, the same amount and your blood sugar goes through the roof, it’s never predictable,” said Braaten.

That unpredictability can cause emotional and mental exhaustion, as well as physical problems, according to Dr. Patricia Turner, a psychologist that routinely works with diabetic patients.

“Every diabetic knows the dangers and the complications and they never really get a break,” Turner said in a phone interview on Nov. 27

“It’s impossible to be perfect at it all time, but that’s what so many people expect of people with diabetes,” she added.

World Diabetes Day, which falls on Nov. 14, was established in 1991 and the International Diabetes Federation lobbied the UN to issue a resolution on it in 2006. 

It became officially recognized in 2007 and the awareness campaigns have grown to extend through the month of November.