I'm 21 years old. As much as I like to consider myself an adult, I know I've barely lived. Yes, I've been in love, traveled to multiple countries, held a steady job, and seen the sunrise. But I haven't held my own child in my arms, said "I Do" in a white dress, walked across the university commencement stage, or owned my own home.

I have spent the last four years of my life fighting against my health though. A fight that has beaten me down, bruised and broken me both physically and emotionally. A fight that I'm ready to give up on.

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Back in 1993, diabetes was a very bulky disease. Meters were two or three times their size now. Lancet devices didn't "ping" the way they do these days; it was more of a "thwack" with no control on how far it went into tiny finger tips. Strip bottles were double their size.

Those basic necessities added up to a hefty weight alone. On top of that, we carried rolls of Lifesavers, a glucagon kit, alcohol swabs, extra syringes and lancets, logbooks, tubes of icing, and random tidbits that got added along the way. It was enough to weight a four year old to the floor.

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Dear Oprah,

I used to be a fan. I used to watch your show all the time. Probably every day. That was back when I was in school and was home by the time you were on.

After I got into the real world and started working, I rarely saw your show. And frankly when I did, it was pretty sensationalized. As a member of the media, I pretty much hate sensationalism. I may be in the media minority when it comes to that, but it's a direction that I simply can't stand our industry has gone in.

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Back in November, Christopher Thomas of Diabetic Rockstar suggested that one of the reasons diabetes doesn't get the attention it deserves is that there are so many different diabetes-related organizations which seem to be so much at odds with each other that "they can't even decide on a color". By this, he was referring to the American Diabetes Association's (ADA's) use of red as its primary color rather than World Diabetes Day Blue, which is close to the blue used by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and not too far off the blue used by dLife® on its Web site and in the screens on dLifeTV®.

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At 11pm Thursday, I took 1mg of dexamethasone. It's a synthetic steroid that acts like cortisol in the body. A normally functioning endocrine system will stop making it's own cortisol when this drug is taken. A cushingoid one will show no difference with active dexamethasone.

So I woke up at 6:30am Friday to get the dexamethasone suppression test done. My blood sugar was 318...they were not kidding about potential high blood sugars. I drove to a local lab (luckily, I could call this test in to do it here instead of driving all the way home from school for it) and they drew the blood. The lab technician said we should know Monday what the results are.

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If you weren't aware, Oprah did an entire episode today on diabetes. The silent killer, the demise of America. People are dropping like flies!!! Haven't you heard?

Okay, maybe I should give Ms. Oprah a little credit for putting this out there. It IS an epidemic. But she owes me a correction. Type 2 is an epidemic! Yes, more and more type 1s are popping up. For goodness sake, I know so many people who were diagnosed in the last 5 years...it's kind of insane. But type 1 is not the focus of Oprah's show.

Although she didn't exactly point that out. The show opens with diabetes being this silent killer, the demise of the population. She actually says that people are dropping like flies. Yep. Like flies. Dr. Oz helps her out with some tricky animation that shows insulin rejecting sugar and the pancreas secreting yellow goo and all sorts of lovely images.

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