Diabetic Divaa

My names Alishia Mancinelli. I am a Type 1 diabetic. I have had this chronic disease since the age of 4. I’ve been living with this for 23 years, I’ll be 28 in August. September of 1992 was when I was diagnosed and ever since then life was a much more challenging experience but I been getting through it.

I am an older sister of 7 and unfortunately I was the only one who was given this disease. During school I still did things children did but I couldn’t eat my candy after trick or treating, or beg my parents for a dollar to get ice cream from the ice cream man. So it took some getting used to as a child and eventually was easier. Once my teenage years hit was when life started to become a little more difficult. I started drinking and then getting sick to the point where I would wind up in the hospital. I would go through times where if I didn’t take my insulin and thought that if I ignored my diabetes it would miraculously go away, well that didn’t help either. So I struggled with this vicious cycle of hospital visits, family fighting and me being extremely unhealthy. This went on for a few years and finally I moved in with my Father, where I was given the comfort in checking my sugar levels every time before meals or if I was sick more frequently. From there I had then visited doctors more often and improved my health tremendously! My A1c was a 14.1 and within the past 3 years of proper control I’m now at a 7.1. Still work for improvement but it’s nothing like what it used to be like. With insurance issues being on a CGM is something my father and I plan to pay out of pocket for, but will get me a little bit closer to improving my glucose control. The money is and will be worth it.

I am on an insulin pump and it helps me because when I get the urge to binge on junk food I have a little leniency. However, there are a few things that we struggle to overcome but we don’t back down, I am a diabetic who doesn’t know when her sugars are low because my body doesn’t react to them properly. So what happens is I get mood swings or start to act funny, my boyfriend is attached to my hip he has to calm me down and check my sugar. He is always on the ball with catching my lows but there are times when it gets too late and I start seizing and an ambulance needs to be called. This is called unaware hypoglycemia. It’s very scary because when it happens and I am unaware of it, and I wake up in the trauma room or just in a hospital bed with no memory of what happened.

Then there’s the opposite I get with high sugars. As soon as my sugar level hits anything over 300 my body feels it and I again get moody and I’m nauseous, but I’m alert and aware of everything going on, I’m just in pain and discomfort. With every step of the way I can say without my boyfriend I don’t think I would have as much of a push. He makes it like there’s nothing wrong with me and what I go through is nothing out of the ordinary. He has learned over the few years of being together what it is to treat a diabetic in any way! He is a full time college student and full time Doctor. We have our difficult times with my diabetes and it causes us to fight, but we know we love each other so we get past it and yes it’s scary but I have an amazing support team which includes not only my boyfriend, father, but my doctors as well.

Although the years of not taking care of myself to caring for myself now upset me, I take my feelings and turn them into strength. I use that strength to keep myself going and wanting to make myself better. My future involves nothing more than to become an amazing wife and awesome mother! With that being my future I will not let this diabetes get what’s best of me and live the future I see myself living!

I have an Instagram account and follow diabetics and put things about diabetes on there; I can be found on Instagram @diabeticdivaa