Avoiding the Lows

            During a night out with friends in downtown London, Kayla Brown noticed a girl in need of advice. Without an ounce of hesitation, Brown approached the stranger to provide her with some much-needed assistance. Even now Brown remembers, “she was so appreciative.”
            Brown was compelled to assist because she and the stranger shared an immediate bond—they were both diabetic. The insulin pump, much like Brown’s own, tucked into the side of the girl’s skirt, gave her away. The reason she needed help? “There are so many other places [she] could put that!” Brown says.
            Of course, if the girl had read the entry titled “Pump on the Run” on Brown’s blog, which focuses on living with Type 1 diabetes, she would have known that during a night out, the best place to wear the pump—which resembles a pager with 23 inch-long plastic tubing—was tucked into either the front or side of the bra. Never one to shy away from acknowledging her Type 1 diabetes, Brown shared this piece of fashion advice with the girl.
            Now, on a regular school day at the University of Western Ontario, Brown sits in a small room with the walls painted a shade of blue not unlike the colour that represents diabetes awareness, wearing her pump just like an accessory. “It’s pretty much like I have a working pancreas,” she says. “It’s just not in me.”
            The insulin pump, which Brown opted for after the insulin injecting needles caused her skin to cut and bruise, is attached directly to the inside of her body through a needle she changes every three days. Although it might be confused for her cell phone when she pulls it out during class to adjust the levels, she says it’s more like an IV that is constantly dripping insulin into her body, a body that can no longer produces its own insulin.
            Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that affects people of all ages. It’s caused when your own immune system starts to attack cell-tissue, and in this case “the attack is specific to these specific insulin producing beta-cells [in the pancreas],” explains Terry Delowich, Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Immunology at Western.
            “Once many of them have died off the amount of insulin produced is significantly reduced,” and once diagnosed with the disease, “you have to take insulin for the rest of your life,” he says.
            It was in January of 2009, recalls Brown when she started to exhibit the classic diabetes symptoms: “I lost a lot of weight: I lost 30 pounds in three months. I was drinking three bags of milk a day and having to always go to the washroom,” she recalls.
            For the then 18-year-old, it was out of the question to imagine something was seriously wrong: in her mind, everything had a cause and effect. She attributed her weight loss to working out more, and the frequent trips to the washroom because she’d been drinking more liquids. To her, it all made sense, but to the loved ones around her, something was seriously wrong. Finally, in March of that same year, “my mom made me go to the doctor,” she says.
            At the doctor’s, a reading of her blood sugar level was taken. A reading for an average person is between five to seven—Brown’s was at 24. She was definitely diabetic. 
            Immediately after being diagnosed, she was bombarded with medical pamphlets explaining what diabetes was, showing her diagrams of a pancreas, and telling her how the disease was going to change her life. But Brown, never one for science, wasn’t interested in sharing the complicated details of her new-found illness. Instead, it was “the social aspect [that] has always interested me.”
            So unlike most people who might choose to deal with this disease privately, Brown decided to share it with as many people as she could as soon as possible.  This is when she got the idea to start her own blog dedicated entirely to living with diabetes.
            “I started it on Facebook,” she recalls. “I was in the hospital for five days, so I was kind of updating my status to let people know where I was. I didn’t even know what I was going through either.” 
            What she was going through was a life-altering experience that would see the rest of her life revolve around injecting insulin and constantly checking her glucose levels; it became a life characterised by literal highs and lows. 
            Some people might dwell on the lows of the disease; instead Brown insists she never plays the sympathy card. In fact, even calling diabetes a disease rubs her the wrong way: “that word—disease—just sounds like it’s gross. I say I have diabetes, I don’t say I have a disease.
            “So many people think ‘oh you have diabetes, you’re going to lose your legs or you’re going to lose your eyesight,’” she adds. “I don’t want to hear that—if you’re positive about it and you treat it right it doesn’t have to be something horrible.”
            This attitude, one that is uplifting and even humorous at times, flows through every word of her blog.
            “Diabetes is very serious, did you know it is the leading cause in kidney failure and amputation?” she writes in her November 15 blog entry.  “Also that over 300,000 Canadians live with type 1 diabetes?  COULD YOU IMAGINE if my blog bombarded you with this information daily? Giving you facts about diabetes and what the likelihood of my survival is. Not only would my readers be depressed, but I am pretty sure I would be drowning in tears.”
            Confident and outgoing are two qualities that perfectly describe both Brown and her writing, but best friend of nearly six years, Michelle Richardson, insists that it wasn’t until after her friend was diagnosed with diabetes that this other side began to flourish.
            “Before she had diabetes she was much more quiet and reserved, and then after, she became so ambitious, and just started the blog and just became [… ] more confident,” Richardson, who reads the blog frequently, explains. “She’s very inspirational.”
            Inspiring people isn’t exactly what Brown had in mind when she set out to write the blog. Initially, she used it as “kind of like a form of therapy,” and as a place to shed light on the non-medical aspect of diabetes, like going on dates or attending university or moving away to live on your own.
            Brown’s blog has a loyal following, and has accumulated over 10,000 individual views. Kane Faucher, a Media, Information and Technology professor at Western, explains that many young people use social media tools like blogging to vent or relieve stress, but after sharing so much personal information online, the user should be aware of the potential for negative feedback.
            “When we open our lives up to public scrutiny, there is no way of controlling the diversity of feedback we may receive ––and some of that feedback may prove to be anti-therapeutic.”
            However, Brown confirms that nearly two and a half years into writing the blog, she’s only received positive feedback from readers—both diabetic and non-diabetic—from around the globe.
            Personal details of her life are often shared through her blog, and even more often it’s with a comical tone. However, Brown admits there is nothing revolutionary about her blog: she simply writes how she feels, and admits sometimes “it’s just the littlest things,” like dropping her pump into the toilet, which no one else writes about. Yet, after receiving countless comments of “that’s exactly what I was thinking,” she’s realized other diabetics around the world appreciate the honestly of her blog. 
            “There’s no point in writing the blog if I was going to lie, and there’s no point in writing it if I hold things back because if I only told half the story then what’s the point of telling it?”
            One of the popular entries on the blog was inspired by an actual date with a guy who continuously probed her about what she could and couldn’t eat. As a reaction Brown wrote, “Diabetic’s Dating Ad,” a humorous take on what a classified ad might look like had it been designed by a diabetic girl looking for her soul mate. As you might guess, “someone who doesn’t ask ‘Can you eat this?’” is printed in bold.
            Currently in her second year of university, Brown intends to continue to write her blog for as long as possible. As for goals after she graduates, she hopes to one day have her blog published as a book so that there will be a lasting resource for young diabetics. She wants others like her to read about her experiences and know that in everything that they are experiencing, they’re not alone.
            “That’s why I write about everything—I know there’s some other diabetic girl that’s got her pump tangled on something.”

Kaitlyn McGrath is currently in her third year pursuing an Honours Specialization degree in English Language and Literature and a certificate in Professional Writing. For the past two years Kaitlyn has worked as an editor at the Gazette, the daily student newspaper at the University of Western Ontario. Last year she worked as a sports editor, and this year she is the opinions editor. Kaitlyn is also a student reader for The Rusty Toque.