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“A really cute guy kept smiling at me,” I wrote in my diary when I was 18.\u00a0 “He looked like a football player.”\u00a0 I had just graduated from high school in Texas and was traveling in Israel with a group of Americans.\u00a0\u00a0 We were sitting in a pub one evening and most of my peers were enjoying the fact that 18 was the legal drinking age.\u00a0 Empty beer glasses and olive pits were scattered on the table.\u00a0 I wasn’t drinking, and I kept looking down at the olive pits because every time I looked up, that cute guy was smiling at me.\u00a0 When I stood to leave, the cute guy followed me to the door and said, “I’m Mike.”\u00a0 I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just smiled, went back to my dorm room, and wrote about the meeting.\u00a0 Little did I know Mike went back to that pub weekend after weekend, hoping I’d return. \u00a0Two months later, I did.\u00a0 We’ve been together ever since.\u00a0 The minute Mike and I began to talk, we realized how much we had in common.\u00a0 And as the years went on, we would learn we had something in common neither of us had ever imagined – not in our wildest dreams (or nightmares).<\/p>\n
Diabetes entered our lives when I was pregnant with our first son.\u00a0 I was diagnosed with borderline gestational diabetes.\u00a0 Neither Mike nor I had any idea what that meant.\u00a0 The doctor told me not to eat cake or cookies.\u00a0 Those were easy to give up, and not knowing any better, I satisfied my craving for sweets with grapes and apple juice.\u00a0 Fortunately, our son, Tom, was born healthy.\u00a0 And my post-pregnancy blood tests were normal.\u00a0 So we forgot about diabetes.\u00a0 We never spoke about it.\u00a0 We had no idea it was still in our midst.<\/p>\n
Thirteen months after Tom was born, Mike came down with a flu-like virus.\u00a0 The virus was gone after a few days, but Mike was different.\u00a0 He was losing weight.\u00a0 He was drinking water and juice by the gallon.\u00a0 Between Tom’s nighttime crying and Mike’s nighttime trips to the bathroom, I wasn’t sleeping at all.\u00a0 I was so exhausted, it took me a few weeks to begin to urge Mike to go to the doctor.\u00a0 He insisted he was fine, just thirsty.\u00a0 He attributed his weight loss to running.\u00a0 We both blamed Tom for our exhaustion.\u00a0 Almost six months went by before Mike got his type 1 diabetes diagnosis.\u00a0 By that time his vision was blurry, his feet were numb, he’d lost over 20 pounds, and his fasting blood glucose level was over 400.\u00a0 His A1c\u00a0 was 15.8%.<\/p>\n
Mike took his diagnosis in stride, and just a few months after it I was pregnant with our second son.\u00a0 And with that pregnancy came yet another diabetes diagnosis.\u00a0 This time it was a real<\/em> gestational diabetes diagnosis.\u00a0 And so suddenly we had his and hers<\/em> insulin pens.\u00a0 And suddenly I was sitting in the bathroom and crying because I was afraid to inject insulin into my thigh.\u00a0 “It’s nothing,” my macho diabetic husband would say.\u00a0 “It’s not nothing,” I’d whine.\u00a0 Mike was right, the injections weren’t really such a big deal.\u00a0 But diabetes wasn’t nothing, especially since my baby’s health was at stake.\u00a0 And deep down inside I knew I wasn’t just married to someone with diabetes.\u00a0 I knew I was a diabetic, too.<\/p>\n After my second pregnancy my blood sugar levels returned to normal-ish.\u00a0 I said to Mike, “If I get pregnant again, two things are certain: it will be a boy, and I’ll have diabetes.” Five years later, both of my predictions came true.\u00a0 With our third son came our fourth diabetes diagnosis; this time it was LADA<\/a>.<\/p>\n With his and hers<\/em> glucometers on our counter, our refrigerator overflowing with insulin, our pockets stuffed with sugar packets, our cabinets filled with lancets and needles, and our hearts a little sick with fears about the genes we’d passed on to our sons, Mike and I sat down to have a serious discussion.\u00a0 We were constantly talking about diabetes, comparing fasting blood glucose levels, and counting carbs.\u00a0 We’d begun to feel like we were married to diabetes.\u00a0 Our marriage wasn’t in jeopardy, but we needed some other outlet.\u00a0 Our diabetes dialogue was\u00a0 like a ping-pong match, and we needed something bigger, an outlet outside of the home, a community.\u00a0 We found it online.\u00a0 The more time we spent reading and identifying with bloggers like Amy Tenderich<\/a>, Kerri Sparling<\/a>, and Scott Johnson<\/a>, the more we realized we wanted to jump in to the Diabetes Online Community (DOC).\u00a0 So we created ASweetLife, a magazine devoted to living a healthy life with diabetes.<\/p>\n Now Mike and I each have our friends in the DOC and we’re sharing our diabetes ping pong match with thousands of diabetics every month.\u00a0 Despite all the amazing support we receive, though, and despite the drawbacks of having two diabetics in the house, nothing can compare to having a partner who knows you all the way down to your blood.\u00a0 With a fair amount of both cynicism and optimism, Mike and I do our best to deal with diabetes as a lifestyle rather than an illness.\u00a0 It’s not the lifestyle we would have chosen, but it has its benefits and has made us healthier in many ways than we would have been otherwise.\u00a0 And since a cure isn’t something we expect to see anytime soon, we push each other and encourage each other to eat healthily and exercise.\u00a0 In the meantime we’re counting on technology to improve our lives. Mike’s debating switching from injections to an insulin pump, and I’m waiting for someone to invent the Twitter of diabetes, something that doesn’t let me go over 140, no matter what.<\/p>\n