This is my son Joseph.  On the outside, you would say he is a typical 12-year-old boy.  He loves riding his bike, having NERF wars with his friends and is happy on Friday when the school week is through.  On the inside, he is not so typical.  When he was 9-years-old, with no warning, his pancreas decided to stop working – forever, it would no longer produce insulin. He was diagnosed with T1D.  Before Joseph’s diagnosis, I had no idea how important insulin is to our survival.  I had no knowledge of blood sugar levels and how dangerous it could be for them to be too high or too low.  In fact, if someone had told me that they were a diabetic, I would think all they need to do is eat “sugar-free” food and things would be fine.  How ignorant I was.

 When Joseph was diagnosed he spent three days in the hospital.  Those three days became a crash course on counting carbohydrates, dosing and injecting insulin into his body and having him check his blood sugar anywhere from 5 to 8 times a day.  Life as we knew it, changed forever.

Living with T1D is a balancing act day to day, hour by hour and minute to minute.  T1D affects every part of Joseph’s life.  He has to monitor everything he eats and count his carbohydrates so he knows how much insulin he needs.  If he is hungry and wants to eat, he needs to inject himself with insulin to keep his blood sugar at a healthy level.  Sounds easy?  It should be, but so many things can also affect his blood sugar, not just the things that he eats.  Too much exercise can affect his blood sugar levels and they can drop dangerously low.  If it’s very hot or humid outside, that can affect his blood sugar.  The most predictable thing about T1D is that it is unpredictable.

 In those initial days of Joseph’s diagnosis, I was lost.  I reached out to Breakthrough T1D and found support, knowledge and most of all, understanding.  The financial support that Breakthrough T1D receives is so crucial to their research.  The research and clinical trials that Breakthrough T1D participates in means hope to us, that one day a cure will be found.

Please consider making a Fund A Cure donation in honor of Joseph and others living with T1D by clicking here.