Living With Type 1 Diabetes

Today we have Audra from Alabama with us. Stay tuned. 

Okay. Audra I know you're in Alabama. So are you a crimson tide girl? I am my family. We're a house divided on my side of the family. 'cause my brother and sister go to Auburn university, and then I, I've always been in Alabama fan. My Granddad was an Alabama fan. I just kinda followed his lead there, but then I ended up coming down here and working for the university of Alabama. So it was game over from there. And now we have a fun rivalry in our family. Let's well you, you'll still be a red hawk though. You'll still be a Miami girl. Oh, yes, of course. 

Well, talk to us a little bit. We know. You have type one diabetes and you're, how old are you now? I am twenty. Five? Okay. Twenty five. So talk about what type one diabetes is and when you found out you had it, but the yours is kind of a different story to that, then let's talk about how you're living with it and then you became a mom and how that changes to when you're pregnant and then afterwards? Yes. Okay. 

So type one diabetes, a lot of people. There's a lot of misconceptions around type one people here, diabetes, and they usually assume type two, diabetes and type one is actually an autoimmune disorder. So the way that I kind of simplify it when I explain it is I haven't pancreas in my body, but it's just kinda there and it doesn't really do anything. So your pancreas regulates in produces insulin to cover how many carbohydrates your body's taking in to keep your blood sugar level in my pancreas has no ability to ever. Produce my own in swin so in. I'm kind of generalizing here, but just to keep it simple usually with type two diabetes, the ability to make insulin is there. It's just stunted and it needs medication and other factors kind of get jump started again. Whereas type one, it's like I don't have the correct cells in my body to ever make my own insulin. So that's why I have to have insulin injected into my body. So that's kind of a big difference. There type one and type two or are pretty different diseases. 

They just both involve involve the patriots and insulin production. So that's why they're kinda group together, but they are really different tech. One runs in my family. My cousin has it and my Paul had it and my whole childhood. My parents were always looking for signs and symptoms of t. one and none of us really exhibited them. And so. Once we all became teenagers, they thought cool. We're out of the woods. 

But what we didn't know at the time was that if you have the genetic predisposition for it that can awake in again and young adulthood from about age nineteen to twenty one with, we didn't know, but found out when it happened to me. So how did you find out that you had it? I, it was like finals week, my sophomore year of college, and I was just feeling weird and I had dropped a lot away all of a sudden which like my body holds onto weight like crazy. So that was very out of the norm. And I was like talking to my mom about it, and I was like, I don't know. It's just I feel kind of weird and she's like, well, you're probably exhausted like finals leak. You like aren't really sleeping and I'm like, well, that's true. 

And we went shopping one day and when we were driving that morning, I noticed that I had to squint more to read the highway signs and I was like, weird. I my. I- prescription must be changing. I should probably make an appointment and she's like, yeah, do that. So I did that. And then by the end of the day, when we were coming home and we were driving back, I was not the one driving which is good. John runs anything on the side. Yeah. I could see there were words there, but I couldn't really make them out even when I was right in front of them and then like monster machine is wrong, and we were just kind of thinking about it and just kind of went on with the rest of the day and like late in the night, we were talking about it. She's like, wait, what if it's like the symptoms of diabetes doesn't sound right? 

So we were googling, and then I took a home once you test it was nine point two, and it's supposed to be below five. Then we went to the yard and in our diagnosis, and there was that. Wow kind of a weird day. Yeah, that's we're particularly during finals week. All that must've been very very terrifying. Yes, it was. 

So what other than taking insulin? What do you have to do? Diet wise, exercise wise? Do you have to do different things than you did before before? 

I was saying nosed. I was actually the healthiest I'd ever been in like I didn't really know much about the differences between one and type two diabetes when they. Said, you're type one diabetic goes like, I don't have diabetes. I've, I've been a runner and I eat well and all this stuff and they're like, no, no, no type one has nothing to do with that. It's not about your lifestyle factors. It just means that you're paying Chris doesn't work, and we need to give you insulin manually to make it work. So I didn't really have to change much. And honestly, I live a healthy lifestyle because I want to not really because I have to. So the trick is just like I can eat cotton candy if I want to. I just have to know roughly how many grams of carbohydrates are in it. And then I give the amount of insulin to cover the number of carbohydrates, and then it will cover it and I should be fine in theory, that's how it's supposed to wear. Your, okay. Have to noise work that we have to tell you something there is a new grape out it used to be in California. It is now here in Ohio. It is a grape. It's it's a green grape. It tastes like cotton candy. Yes. Okay. So have you heard about that the other day? It's the coolest chased us my cotton candy. And then do you freeze them? Oh, that's such a good idea. Delicious. So should get them. We were at Publix last night, and my husband Brian was like, we need these like we don't need those. They probably don't even taste that good. And they think you've talked me into it. Do they taste like I just had them last week and they taste like gain, if got and kidding, these are a lot healthier for you. Yeah. There you go. You still have to watch the sugar? Correct. Like on things like this to. Right. 

So how do you, how do you measure the mount of sugar? It's kind of like a guesstimate most times in it's actually a misconception. So most people think you have to count like grams of sugar, but most of the time on nutrition facts, the grams of sugar isn't always accurate and managing t one has to do with the breakdown of carbohydrates in your bloodstream though. I just have to follow grams of carbs, which if I'm eating something for. A box or something that I can look up online, then I usually have an accurate number to go off of for measuring carbohydrates. 

But if it's like a Cup of strawberries that usually have to kind of guesstimate and in the beginning, that was rough because I didn't know like I didn't even know what was considered a higher amount of carbs or lower. Like I didn't know anything. So my cousin helped me through that in the beginning. But now I can basically I've had it five years now, so I can pretty much look at a plate of food in basically see roughly how many grams of carbs are in each thing. Would always give me. Just sit down and say, oh, let's do this new game, and then you can win, but make sure you bet. Yeah. When a lot of this means that was like a plate of food and it's like how normal person sees a plate of food and it's just the plate of food. And then the other side's like how it type one sees a plate of food and it's like all these numbers I kept every time I eat, it's like a mass equation, and I'm usually terrible at math, but this I, I've had to get under my belt. 

So did things change when you became pregnant? Yes. So pregnancy I always knew would be rough because t. one is autoimmune in its an Indo croon disorder. So anytime you have hormones lectu rations your blood sugars impact it. So for women at that time of the month, if your sugar's running high and you're doing everything right, but it still just stubborn. Running high won't come back down. That's because your hormones and there's really not much you can do except just write it out. So obviously with pregnancy, there's lots of crazy hormone changes. So I, I was. Pared going into it for lots of craziness. It took my husband and I about two and a half years to get pregnant. 

So I spent that time kind of making sure that my a one c was low as I could get it, which you're a one c is a percentage measurement of your average blood sugars over the past two or three months. So for non diabetics below five and my endocrinologist was like, I'm happy if you're Zada seven like that means that you're doing a good job. And then when I got pregnant, mine was five point eight. So I was pretty proud of that. And that was like, let me see if I can keep this going. Because towards the end of pregnancy, you hit a lot of infant resistance where your body just like needs so much more influent but doesn't really know how to process it correctly because it's so focused on helping the baby. 

But in the beginning like first trimester, I had a lot of low blood sugars due to all the new hormones, and my body was starting to change and. The way that my body reacted to that was by having lots of low blood sugar instead of high blood sugars. And I actually had a bunch of seizures in the first trimester, which I wasn't really expecting that. I don't think anyone on my medical team was expecting that. But as soon as I hit the second trimester, they calmed down. So that was now I'm like, well, I know for next time that that might be a thing that happened, but second trimester was pretty smooth sailing. I was done with the crazy low blood sugars and the seizures they would happen from time to time. 

But before it was like a few week in in the second trimester, it was like maybe one or two month, second trimester. I felt pretty good and and I hadn't hit resistance yet. So I was basically able to kind of manage things as normal for the most part, and then they're try musters just win everything hit the fan. I had such that insulin resistance. I wear an insulin pump and I changed my insulin pump site about every three to four days. It takes usually about three to four days for me to run out of insulin in my pump. But in the third trimester, I was thinking it every day. I would require three to four days worth of insulin in one day. That was crazy. 

Even though I kind of prepared myself for that. It's still just as kind of nuts when you're like, I'm doing everything right, but it's just not responding. It had to be a sickly exhausting to because your babies, so. Wow. Yeah, it was so exhausting. Title, like at the end of the third trimester. And I'm glad I did because I needed to focus on my health is my fulltime job. Right? But, okay, tell us about the little one. Her name's Nora Jo and has been nothing but crazy healthy and she was born and she's just a miracle to us. We were getting ready to really hit the like really gear up with fertility treatments about this time last year. And we kept waiting for the next cycle to start. Nothing was happening, and I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. So she was definitely a miracle. I was told by lots of doctors, you'll never get pregnant on your own and maybe not with intervention. And so that was really disappointing. But then she was like, Nope, I'm gonna. I'm gonna exist. Sorry. And she defied all though I was induced a couple of weeks early because type one diabetic women can to grow bigger babies faster. 

Even if you have perfect numbers, your whole pregnancy. Not really sure why. You know if if I was having high numbers, I could maybe see why that would happen. But even with women that are perfectly controlled, we still just groping her babies. So I was induced a couple weeks early and after thirty hours of labor ended in a crazy emergency c. section. But she came out screening and has been perfect ever since pretty much. So it's been an adventure. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing your story. Number one, I did not know about type one diabetes. I did not know. Realize it was an autoimmune. I had no idea, and just how you how you're dealing with it and how you're living with it. It's just enter twenty five years old and you have a now a beautiful baby girl who's four months old. 

So I wanna thank you for being with us, and I'm sure are. Our listeners will have learned a lot from you and it'll be up on Facebook and different sites. 

So people can even contact you about some information if they need to say living with diabetes type one diabetes, how do you do it? So thanks Audra. Yes, that would be awesome. Thank you for having me on and so happy to take any opportunity. I can to educate because I know before I was diagnosed, I had no clue the differences between the two or anything about two long really. So anytime I can educate your help, I'm happy to do it. So if anyone ever needs to ask questions, I'm an open book. Thank you.

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