I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was five years old, on my mother’s birthday. It has been quite a journey since then. I was lucky to have an exceptionally supportive family who didn’t treat diabetes as if it were this sensitive thing. It was a part of my life, and we were going to find ways to deal with it. 

I had a normal childhood, and was open about having diabetes with my friends and family. At one point, I became the spokesperson for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, quite literally the poster child for type 1 diabetes. Complications from the disease were talked about, but I never thought they would happen to me. I believed I had everything under control. What I wasn’t aware of, was that diabetes was slowly eating away at my kidneys. 

Looking back, there were hints of the problems to come. My ankles started to swell, but I thought it was a side effect of working on the 66th floor of an office tower and being on an airplane every month. In November 2018, I was on a call with a friend when I started having trouble breathing. I called an ambulance, and doctors told me in the hospital that my blood pressure had spiked to dangerous levels. I was on the brink of having a heart attack and my kidneys were failing.