Finding Purpose Through Diabetes: Three Stories

More than 40 million Americans live with diabetes, and every one of them has their own experience of managing it. For some, diabetes led to a sense of purpose: helping others with the same condition. These are three of their stories, as told to CDC.

Image from CDC's page "The Diabetes Journey to Purpose."

Ashley James: from denial to teaching

Ashley James. Image from CDC's page "The Diabetes Journey to Purpose."

Ashley James was 31 when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and she has lived with it for 12 years. At first she was in complete denial: she filled her prescriptions, but wouldn't take her medicine.

Her wake-up call came from a colleague, a nephrologist (kidney doctor), who explained that unmanaged diabetes can lead to vision loss, heart disease, kidney disease and more. "That was the turning point for me," she says. Small changes came first, and they got easier: eating better, being active and taking her medicines as prescribed.

Diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES) wasn't offered where she lived — this was before telehealth, and the nearest program was an hour's drive away. If distance kept her out, she reasoned, it was keeping others out too. So she became a diabetes care and education specialist and took what she knew to local churches, asking pastors — trusted people in her community — to help clear up the stigma and misconceptions around diabetes.

Her advice: "The sooner you accept your diagnosis, the sooner you can do something about it."

Tiffany Witschen: camp, then a career

Tiffany Witschen. Image from CDC's page "The Diabetes Journey to Purpose."

Tiffany Witschen was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 11. Her older brother had been diagnosed a few years earlier, so her mother knew the symptoms. Tiffany's blood sugar was dangerously high, and she spent 4 days at a children's hospital getting it stabilized, watching diabetes videos and learning from nurses to inject insulin by practicing on oranges.

At home her days filled up with blood sugar checks, carb counting and insulin. As the only kid at school with diabetes, she felt different. Then her mother found a summer camp for kids with diabetes. "I remember going there and feeling like I wasn't the odd person out," she says. She went back every summer, made lifelong friends, and at 18 became a counselor there.

She went on to study nursing, specializing in pediatric endocrinology, and is now a diabetes care and education specialist herself. Her patients relate to her, she feels, because she's living through it right along with them.

Barbara Bachar: a late start, then a routine

Barbara Bachar. Image from CDC's page "The Diabetes Journey to Purpose."

Barbara Bachar's story began 32 years ago, when a workplace health screening put her blood sugar in the diabetes range. She felt fine, and put the result down to being a busy mother who neglected herself. Years passed before she saw a doctor, who diagnosed type 2 diabetes. In the early 1990s, diabetes education was far less available than it is now, and she didn't know anyone living with it.

Through patience and trial and error, she kept her A1C at her doctor's target, helped by a daily routine — until retirement upended it. On a friend's advice she got a referral to DSMES. She learned to eat healthily on a budget, and now cooks vegetarian meals for her granddaughter. Today she volunteers in diabetes education at the clinic where she took the program.

What she has learned:

• Start slowly. "Make small changes in small increments."
• Don't demand perfection. She treats her numbers not as successes or failures, just results.
• Lean on support. Her children are her support system; her grandchildren are her reason for staying healthy.

Sources

Based on "The Diabetes Journey to Purpose," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.