Happy Anniversary Diabetes??? | How a diagnosis changed my life as a doctor and as a mom

Can a diagnosis have a birthday? An anniversary of the day of receiving the diagnosis? Getting an official name for the reasons why a person isn’t feeling well can certainly be sprung on you as quickly and painfully as a birth, at least that was my personal experience when my son was diagnosed with diabetes six years ago.  He was 17, a senior in high school, feeling like he didn’t have a care in the world until that fateful day. It actually started at night - when I heard him get up late again to go to the bathroom, and I remembered him talking about how thirsty he had been recently. As a mom I had tried to brush it off as normal teenage angst about everything, but as a doctor I knew we should investigate further. So, as soon as I got up the next morning, I made the appointment with our primary care office. Later that evening we were on the way to the hospital for my son to be admitted as his blood sugar was reading 367. He officially had diabetes.

As most of my patients with diabetes are adults, I had almost forgotten about the “automatic hospital admission” for “instruction on use of insulin” that accompanies every pediatric diabetes diagnosis - especially with a blood sugar over 300! I struggled with giving my son the option of staying at the hospital by himself because he was 17 - “almost an adult”. I was so relieved when he said I could stay because I would have been awake all night at home. So, I put aside my medical degree, and we learned together, mother and son, about how to manage his diabetes. About the needle sticks required to test blood sugars and the needle sticks required to give yourself insulin. About different foods and how they affect the blood sugar, and about how important it is to monitor blood sugar levels throughout the day and with varying degrees of activity. 

Although my son didn’t feel like a “kid” when he was diagnosed, he went through many of the same anger and feelings of rejection experienced by anyone with a chronic medical condition, asking internally, and out loud “Why me?” “Why do I have to think about this?” “Why do I have to take this medicine and monitor everything I do and everything I eat?” “This isn’t FAIR!!” 

A diagnosis of diabetes can be especially difficult in the teenage years when challenging authority and pushing boundaries is expected and even encouraged.  But a sad reality is that more and more adolescents are being diagnosed with diabetes and many beyond that would be considered to have “pre-diabetes” Seeing the potential warning signs, including increasing weight and decreasing activity, especially with a family history of diabetes, can raise suspicion for developing health problems. Studies have shown that “The lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes is 40% for individuals who have one parent with type 2 diabetes and 70% if both parents are affected¹. First degree relatives of individuals with Type 2 diabetes are about 3 times more likely to develop the disease than individuals without a positive family history of the disease².”

The spectrum of diabetes involves the loss of insulin producing cells in the pancreas and increasing insulin resistance in the muscles and tissues. “Insulin resistance” is the inability of the cells in the body to adequately respond to the insulin in the blood to take up and utilize sugars for fuel. More sugars floating around in your blood stream causes damage over time to blood vessels and nerves. And it is those elevated sugars and damage in the early stages of diabetes that can increase risk for issues such as heart disease, kidney failure, neuropathy/pain syndromes and blindness later on. Insulin resistance can develop in anyone and can be related to medications, such as steroids, or to issues such as excess body fat (especially in the central/belly area) and a lack of physical activity.

Insulin resistance doesn’t always turn into prediabetes or diabetes, but it can. It is important to understand that there are many people with the potential to develop insulin resistance and diabetes. The CDC has shown that among US children and adolescents aged 10 to 19 years, the overall incidence of type 2 diabetes has significantly increased from 2002-2018.

With those statistics in mind, there are things we can do to prevent it. A focus on healthy lifestyle choices and routine follow-ups with a doctor can help catch, delay, or prevent the development of diabetes in both children and adults.   

Diabetes also affects my life as an employee and colleague as, since 2012, Diabetes prevention, awareness, and care has been Sun Life’s global cause. As I mentioned before, the most common form of diabetes, type 2, the kind my son has, can be managed and prevented. That’s why Sun Life has committed to slow the advance of diabetes and its related complications. In 2023 alone, Sun Life committed over $1M to diabetes-related programming, helping improve access to healthy living programs for over 54,000 individuals.

While my son is not necessarily celebrating the anniversary of his diagnosis, he has at least embraced the realities of diabetes. He accepts the need to take his medicines, watch his diet and get regular exercise. As a mom I am continually awed and inspired by his capacity to adapt and adjust to his reality. As a doctor I understand the intense commitment and ongoing tenacity that it takes to keep blood sugars under control. While his isn’t the perfect, uncomplicated life that we all wish for our children, his diagnosis has taught him many valuable life lessons and he is managing well.

So, for me, I say a begrudging “Happy Birthday, diabetes” this month, and hope that others will learn from the experience of my family, especially from the resiliency of my son as he enters his adulthood. I know I have.

You can read more about Sun Life and our commitment to diabetes prevention, awareness, and care and the specific projects we work with in the press releases below:

• American Diabetes Association’s Project Power
• Health Access Grant Program
• #SunLifeDunk4Diabetes
• Fit to Win Youth Program with the Boston Celtics
• #StrikeoutDiabetes with the Kansas City Royals

1. Tillil H, Köbberling J. Age-corrected empirical genetic risk estimates for first-degree relatives of IDDM patients. Diabetes. 1987;36:93–99. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

2. Florez JC, Hirschhorn J, Altshuler D. The inherited basis of diabetes mellitus: implications for the genetic analysis of complex traits. Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2003;4:257–291. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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