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I've swallowed my pride and decided to apply for disability services here at school. They can offer me a few resources that I do not have access to otherwise. Most importantly, they give me the ability to register early for class and to notify my professor's that there is a legitimate health issue that I deal with.

The past two semesters, I've considered doing it, but I've also thought it was too embarrassing. But finally, things have gotten to the point where I'm realizing that it's not embarrassing, it's reality. So I've taken the initial steps to go through with it.

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Moon

With a tainted past of endless symptoms ranging from irregular periods to joint pain, I am constantly looking for new ways to manage my life. By manage my life I mean that I look for new techniques to relieve stress, I change my surroundings to optimize my happiness and I closely examine the medical choices I have to make. This all started about three years ago. Right after my senior year in high school, I started experiencing an array of symptoms. Slowly, they all compounded leaving me with an entire page of bullet points of things going wrong with me. Joint pain, muscle weakness, fatigue, irregular and painful periods, headaches, ear aches, mood swings and so on. (READ MORE)

Thursday night, I decided to stay up a little too late (or early, we shall say). My mother always warned me when I was younger to monitor my blood sugars closely when I threw my sleep cycle off. I never figured out why, because I always seemed to be fine. What does me being a night owl have to do with blood sugars?

But Thursday night was an extreme. I didn't get to bed until just before the sun was rising. I made sure to sleep in as long as possible (and managed 6 hours of sleep) just to make it through the day ahead of me.

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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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Fillmore Photography

I decided to try the bioidentical hormone treatment. After reading books, studies and general information, I feel that I made an educated decision. I went to a seminar and personally talked to the doctor who founded the clinic. I spent hours on the web looking through positive and negative feedback from research studies, personal stories and major medical journals. And I used my brain. (READ MORE)

Diabetes is a very physical disease. It loves to leave behind marks to show it was there. The strange "tells," "war wounds," and "evidence" that this disease is wreaking havoc on my body both internally and externally.

The easiest sign of diabetes is the calluses on my fingertips. They've been my biggest complaint with this disease (physically at least) since I can remember. I hate the way they mar my fingers with their tiny spots and uneven edges. It never can be skin against skin, smooth and simple. When I run my hands over anything, I feel the tips of my fingers drop their tiny hints of this disease.

As if my fingertips weren't beaten enough, my body has all the signs of needles and insertions. I have bruises galore. Plus the tiny red spots from infusion sites and syringes. And every three months, there's the bruise of getting blood drawn on the crease of my arm. (READ MORE)