November Wears Blue

The blue circle — the universal symbol for diabetes awareness.

November is Diabetes Awareness Month, and I want to tell you plainly why it matters to me: type 1 diabetes has touched my family, like it has so many families. I won't dress that up. If someone you love lives with this disease, you already know what I'm about to say. If nobody in your life does, give me a few minutes — because the odds are somebody in your life will, and a little understanding goes a long way.

What type 1 actually is

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. The body's own immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that make insulin, and one day they simply can't make it anymore. Insulin is the hormone that moves sugar out of your blood and into your cells for energy. Without it, the sugar stays in the blood, and the body starves in the middle of plenty.

Here is what type 1 is not: it is not caused by eating sugar. It is not caused by lifestyle, or weight, or anything a parent did or failed to do. Nobody eats their way into type 1, and nobody can diet their way out of it. It often shows up in childhood — that's why a lot of folks still call it juvenile diabetes — but it can arrive at almost any age, and once it arrives, it stays. There is no cure. There is management, and management is a full-time job.

A job with no days off

Living with type 1 means doing, every single day, the work a healthy pancreas does without asking. Counting carbohydrates before every meal. Checking blood sugar — by finger stick or a sensor on the arm — through the day and sometimes through the night. Dosing insulin for food, for activity, for illness, for stress. Treating a low at three in the morning. There are no holidays from it. There is no vacation where you leave the diabetes at home.

And families carry it together. Parents of a child with type 1 become nurses who never clock out. Spouses learn the signs of a low the way they learn each other's moods. When I say this disease has touched my family, that's the part I mean most: it touches everybody at the table.

Know the signs

One of the hardest things about type 1 is how often it's missed at first. The early signs get written off as a stomach bug, a growth spurt, a kid being a kid. But they stack up fast:

• Extreme thirst that drinking doesn't satisfy
• Constant trips to the bathroom
• Weight loss without trying
• Hunger that eating doesn't fix
• A tiredness that sleep doesn't touch

Together, those signs can turn dangerous in a hurry — a condition called DKA, diabetic ketoacidosis — and too many people still get their diagnosis in an emergency room. If you see that stack in a child or an adult, don't wait. Ask for a blood sugar test. It takes a minute, and it can save a life.

The dollar that still preaches

There's one story I never get tired of. In 1921, in Toronto, Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin — and suddenly a diagnosis that had been a death sentence became a life that could be lived. Banting and his colleagues sold the patent to the University of Toronto for one dollar each. Banting said insulin did not belong to him; it belonged to the world.

A century later, the symbol of diabetes awareness is a blue circle — a sign of unity, and of the sky we all share. November wears blue. Now you know why.

How to help

If this month has touched your family too, you know. If it hasn't, here's how to stand with the families it has:

Learn the signs above — that's the one that saves lives. Be patient with the person at your table doing math before they eat; they're not being picky, they're dosing medicine. And if you're able, give. Research, camps for kids with type 1, education, advocacy — it all runs on people deciding this matters.

You can give to the American Diabetes Association here: https://donate.diabetes.org/tee

Almost every family I know is carrying something — some diagnosis, some long night, some job with no days off. This month, ours wears blue. If yours does too, you're not alone in it. And if it doesn't, thanks for reading far enough to understand the ones it does.