Hi, my name is Maria, and I’m 38 years old. This is a real-life story about how I celebrated the symptoms of Type 1 diabetes before I realized what they represented and that they were slowly killing me.
The World’s My Oyster
At 21 years old, life was perfect. Everything was turning out exactly as I had always hoped.
A few years earlier, my family had moved from South Africa to Qatar. It was a world away from everything we'd known. The language was foreign, the culture was different, and everywhere you looked there was sand. But it was also exciting. Life in the Middle East had a certain glamour about it. I was living with my parents and my brother; work was going well, and for the most part, life was carefree.
Looking back, I realize how blissfully unaware I was.
Diabetes, more specifically type 1 diabetes, wasn't even on my radar.
If you'd asked me what I knew about it back then, I could have summed it up in a few sentences. Diabetics aren’t supposed to eat sugar, and some people need injections while others take tablets. My grandfather had Type 2 diabetes and swallowed a pill every day. We also had a family friend who had type 1 diabetes, and whenever we visited him, we'd take sugar-free chocolates instead of the regular kind.
That was the extent of my knowledge.
It’s one of those illnesses that happens to other people.
My Body Starts Changing.
I had always been the chubby child. Never hugely overweight, but always carrying a few extra pounds that seemed impossible to lose. Then, almost overnight, they began disappearing.
Eight kilograms. Three weeks.
No diet. No gym. No lifestyle changes.
I was thrilled.
For the first time in my life, I liked what I saw in the mirror. Better still, I could eat almost anything I wanted and somehow continue losing weight. Pizza, chocolate, takeout... nothing seemed to matter.
I genuinely believed the universe had finally decided to throw me a bone.
What I didn't know was that my body wasn't becoming healthier.
It was starving.
Around the same time, I also noticed that I was constantly thirsty. Now, living in Qatar, being thirsty wasn't unusual. Summer temperatures regularly climbed high enough to make anyone reach for a bottle of water. But this wasn't normal thirst.
No matter how much I drank, the thirst refused to go away.
It was relentless.
Of course, drinking so much fluid meant I spent half my life running to the bathroom.
I convinced myself my bladder must have developed a personality disorder. Nights became a cycle of sleeping for an hour or so and then waking up desperate to use the toilet. Looking back, I don't know how I managed to convince myself this was normal.
Strangely, I didn't actually feel ill.
I wasn't weak. I wasn't bedridden. I wasn't in pain. I still went to work every day.
If anything, life still felt pretty good.
Then something happened that made even less sense.
My eyesight improved.
I'd worn glasses since I was nine years old because I couldn't see into the distance. Most people associate diabetes with worsening eyesight, but uncontrolled blood sugar can temporarily change the shape of the eye's lens in different ways. In my case, my vision actually became clearer.
At the time, I thought I'd somehow won the eyesight lottery.
It wasn't luck.
It was another warning sign.
My World Collapses Around Me
The person who finally joined the dots wasn't me.
It was my dad.
Having grown up with a father who had Type 2 diabetes, he recognized the symptoms almost immediately.
"You've lost eight kilos in three weeks," he said. "You're drinking constantly. I think you need to get your blood sugar checked."
My dad is one of the smartest people I know. If he was worried, I paid attention.
Still, I wasn't panicking.
That's just my personality. I don't spend much time worrying about things that haven't happened yet. Sometimes that's a strength. Sometimes it's a weakness.
This time, it was probably both.
Although healthcare in Qatar is free, the public system means long waits for appointments and blood tests. I didn't want to wait, so my boyfriend at the time—who was Arabic and could thankfully translate wherever we went—came with me to a private clinic.
Everything about the clinic was peaceful. Spotlessly clean and ultra-modern. Because appointments were scheduled so efficiently, there was hardly anyone in the waiting room.
The blood was taken and sent to a laboratory.
A few days later, I returned to collect the results.
They arrived in a sealed envelope. For several seconds, I just stared at the envelope, terrified of what I was going to learn. Eventually, with trembling hands, I picked it up and fumbled it open. And there it was……
My blood sugar level was 513 mg/dL.
For context, a healthy blood sugar usually shouldn't rise much above 120 mg/dL after eating.
Mine was more than four times higher. And I hadn’t eaten for several hours.
But this was still not a diagnosis; just a piece of paper with some numbers.
So, we drove to the Emergency Department at Hamad Hospital.
After waiting to see a doctor, I was asked my age, looked over briefly, and diagnosed with - wait for it - type 2 diabetes!
I was given Metformin tablets and told they might make me feel nauseous for a couple of weeks. Then I was sent home.
Within hours, I wasn't just nauseous. I was violently ill. I couldn't stop vomiting. I couldn't even keep water down. So back to the emergency room we went.
This time, I met a tiny young Palestinian doctor.
I'll admit it now—I looked at her and wondered whether she was experienced enough to know what she was doing.
Within minutes, she proved me spectacularly wrong.
She studied my notes, looked at my blood results, and seemed genuinely shocked.
Then she looked at me and said the sentence that ripped my life into two parts.
"You have Type 1 diabetes. You'll need insulin for the rest of your life."
Oddly enough, I didn't cry.
Not then.
I was admitted to the hospital and taken to a ward where I was told someone would come the following day to explain everything.
I accepted it.
What else was I supposed to do?
The tears came the next day.
A hospital representative arrived to teach me how to live with Type 1 diabetes. Because of the language barrier, I don't remember learning very much. I nodded along, trying desperately to keep up, but inside I was thinking, Did I miss a class that everyone else attended? What I do remember, though, is an old-fashioned glass vial of insulin, a syringe, and being told that if my blood sugar was high, I should walk around the garden and drink plenty of water.
That was it.
This Is My New Future
In that moment, the future I’d imagined for myself suddenly looked very different.
Not because I thought I was going to die.
Because I thought I'd never eat birthday cake again.
Looking back, it sounds almost ridiculous.
But I was twenty-one.
I wasn't worrying about long-term complications.
I wasn't thinking about kidneys or eyesight or heart disease.
I was thinking about birthdays.
Celebrations.
Spontaneous dinners.
Nights out with friends.
I thought every one of those moments had just been taken away from me.
After a few days in hospital, my blood sugar had stabilized, and I'd learned how to inject myself.
The injections weren't actually what frightened me.
It was the routine.
For twenty-one years I'd lived spontaneously.
Now I imagined every day being controlled by clocks, insulin, meals and rules.
I believed my old life was over.
Thankfully, I was wrong.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Not long after returning to work, I spoke to a colleague whose daughter also had type 1 diabetes.
That conversation changed everything.
She introduced me to insulin pens.
She explained bolusing.
She told me that, with planning, I absolutely could eat birthday cake.
She also introduced me to what she jokingly called "a diabetic's best friend"—cheese.
As someone who has always loved cheese, that tiny piece of advice brought me an absurd amount of comfort.
For the first time since my diagnosis, I realized something important.
Diabetes wasn't the end of my life.
It was the beginning of learning how to live it differently.
At twenty-one, however, I couldn't quite grasp it all yet. Part of me was still mourning the life I’d thought I'd lost. Another part was beginning to believe that perhaps I hadn't lost it after all. Somehow, birthday cake was back on the menu, and the numbers on the bathroom scale mattered a little less than they had before. For the first time since leaving the hospital, my future didn't look quite so scary.
But the road ahead would be anything but easy.
Over the next two decades, my type 1 diabetes would test me in ways I couldn't possibly have imagined. There would be denial, burnout, frightening hospital admissions, remarkable medical advances, and eventually a move to Spain, where one small piece of technology would transform how I lived with the condition.
But that is a story for another day.
If there's one thing I wish every newly diagnosed person knew, it's this:
The day I thought I was finally losing my baby fat wasn't the day my life ended.
It was the day my body started demanding that I pay attention.
And I'm incredibly grateful that, eventually, I did. And still do.
Looking back now, I can’t help but smile at the naïve young woman who stood on the bathroom scale celebrating those disappearing kilograms. She thought she was finally becoming healthier. She had no idea her body was desperately trying to tell her something was wrong.
At twenty-one, I believed good health was something I could see in the mirror. Today, I know it's something far less obvious. It's about learning to listen when your body is trying to tell you something.
Supporting Your Journey
Being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes can be overwhelming. There are new terms to learn, new routines to establish, and countless questions along the way. The good news is that you don't have to figure everything out on your own.
At LL Medico, we've spent more than 30 years helping people living with chronic conditions and the family members who care for them. Whether you're looking for diabetes care supplies, wound care products, or nutritional support products, we're here to help you find practical solutions that make everyday life a little easier.
As health needs change over time, many of our customers also rely on our wide range of incontinence products, including adult diapers, as well as hundreds of other home healthcare essentials.
If you'd like friendly, knowledgeable advice, call us at (855) 422-4556 or email support@llmedico.com. We'd be delighted to help you find the products that best suit your needs.
