Join us for an interview with Chasity and discover how she was able to manage through her journey with Type 1 Diabetes. This is Chasity’s Healthful Story^TM. Please note that the video may only play in landscape mode when viewed on a mobile device.

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Navigate Chasity’s Healthful Journey^TM:

00:38 Especially with the Diabetes community, I don’t think there’s enough resources out there and I’m always willing to help people and shine light as best as I can
01:05 I appreciate you reaching out and giving me the chance to share my story and my perspective on things

01:19 I’m from Arizona. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’m a big Sun Devil and Cardinals fan and my husband and I just got married this year

01:41 I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when I was eight

01:47 Leading up to me being diagnosed I was losing a lot of weight. My grandmother was actually the one who realized something was not right. Being around somebody all the time, you might not see the weight loss but she noticed that I was going to the bathroom constantly and that I was constantly thirsty so she had let my mom know that she might need to take me in to be seen by a doctor

02:13 Unfortunately, I never made it to my doctor’s appointment

02:15 I was actually diagnosed on February 12^th with Type 1 Diabetes

02:23 I ended up getting really sick and just kept throwing up and couldn’t hold anything down to the point that I was throwing up stomach acid which happens when you don’t have any substance in your system anymore and then I was just very lethargic which isn’t like me and especially for a kid in second grade

02:49 My mom took me to one of the local hospital here where they ran all types of testing. My blood sugar ended up being over 1200 which is insanely insanely high

03:02 The doctors were very surprised that I was even awake because they had said most patients who have blood sugars at 4-500 are starting to have seizures, strokes, or go into comas

03:16 Then I was transported over to Phoenix Children’s Hospital and I was at Phoenix Children’s Hospital for about two weeks

03:24 I was in the Intensive Care Unit for about a week and then another week in just a normal room but that’s when I got a lot of my educational information and I started the process of figuring out what I was going to do when I went home

03:55 The biggest difference between Type 1 and Type 2 is my pancreas doesn’t work at all so I’m dependent on insulin through injections

04:03 I remember my mom coming in and kind of explaining to me that when we leave like that I’m going to have to we have a diet

04:20 I was on a strict three meals plus three snacks a day but I could only eat certain foods and so much of them because I was on a carb count diet at the time

04:30 My mom explained to me that I’m going to be taking shots when I go home and get my finger pricked

04:40 I understood once I got home that this is my life now, that this is what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life

04:59 I don’t feel like I went through a lot of the same emotions maybe as somebody who would be diagnosed in their teens or early adulthood. I feel like most of the feelings I’ve had towards diabetes came later in my life in high school and now as an adult but back then I just knew that I was different

05:17 I think that was the biggest thing is that as a kid I missed out on a lot of things

05:39 For instance when I went back to school after being in the hospital my classmates had bags of candy and stuff for me for Valentine’s Day and I wasn’t allowed to eat that anymore

05:51 Going trick-or-treating wasn’t as fun anymore because I couldn’t indulge in the all the candy that I worked to get!

05:59 I wasn’t allowed to have cake and ice cream at birthday parties!

06:09 But I also knew at the same time I had to do this to stay alive so I think early on that responsibility of small sacrifices leading to me to live a healthier happier life was instilled

06:37 Living with diabetes brings a lot of independence at such an early age. It’s crazy to think at eight or nine years old I was having to  be super healthy and take on that responsibility

06:52 At this time I have to do this and I have to make sure that I’m not missing doses and that can be a lot on a kid

07:00 My grandparents were the biggest support for me. As much as my mom and dad were there day to day I would say my grandparents played a much bigger part in me being able to deal with the parts of being different because my grandparents made it seem normal in a way 07:19 For example, if we’d all be hanging out with my cousins and stuff it wasn’t like they would make a scene for me to get pulled away to go do this. They just made it a little bit easier

07:30 It’s hard to describe in a way but they just made things a lot easier

07:54 My whole family started to be on a much stricter schedule with things. For example, I would eat at 8 AM, snack at 10 AM, have lunch at 12, so I was eating every two hours which everyone else became accustomed to

08:05 So i think that helped because everybody was in somewhat of a transition when it came to food

08:12 I was a kid so exercising wasn’t much of a task. Now as an adult we have jobs and other things going on so unless you dedicate the time to exercise most people don’t so I don’t think the adjustments were too big of a deal necessarily

08:31 It was just more me personally having to deal with getting injections three times a day, getting my finger pricked four times a day. Those were the things that made a bigger difference in my day-to-day

09:01 Because I’ve had diabetes for 23 almost 24 years

09:10 It’s hard for me not to think of a time when I wasn’t diabetic just because this is so second nature to me but it is also in a way hard to get used to because diabetes is always changing. I could have something not affect my blood sugars today but if I ate it three days from now it could have a totally different effect on me

09:35 I think with diabetes you just have to always adapt

09:41 It’s great because technology is so much better than when I first got diagnosed. I remember my meter was as big as my phone to where now it’s like really really tiny

09:56 I was on two different types of insulin when I first got diagnosed

10:02 One was called regular and the other was NPH which they don’t make any more

10:09 Once I entered junior higher high school I went on to what’s called a sliding scale which let me eat a little bit more freely

10:16 I wasn’t on as strict of a diet because I think one of the challenges I faced was having to eat when you’re not hungry

10:24 I hated food for the longest time because it was just like “another snack again… ugh I’m not hungry but I have to force this down”

10:35 And when I entered junior high and in high school I wasn’t on that type of a routine anymore and I got to eat a little bit more freely

10:43 I was on a faster acting insulin to where I would just take insulin whenever I ate and adjust for that

10:51 Or if I got sick or had high blood sugars I’d adjust there and then

10:58 Fast forward to now, I actually got on an insulin pump earlier in 2020 which has completely changed my life

11:06 So I have this attached to me at all times. It looks like a pager but it’s not

11:14 It’s my pump

11:33 As far as health care goes I’ve never had any issues with the physicians I’ve seen

11:40 I remember all of my doctors being fantastic. Even my current doctor that I see, she’s awesome and she caters to me as her patient

11:53 She knows my lifestyle and things that I have going on in my life so we try to work my diabetes around that versus me having to work everything around my diabetes which is great

12:04 I’m very fortunate for the healthcare that I have because diabetes is extremely expensive

12:12 I remember that growing up my parents had lots of medical expenses and having to figure out financially how they can afford stuff because insulin especially in the United States is, without good health coverage, I don’t know how people do it

12:27 I know for me my my costs would be probably a thousand dollars at least a month if not more in supplies if I didn’t have insurance

13:36 I tested my limits in high school

13:40 I tested how far I could go either without taking insulin which is bad, like very very bad

13:48 I had several hospital visits due to that because I had almost convinced myself at a certain point that I had been misdiagnosed or that I didn’t have diabetes anymore because I was going days and sometimes a week or so at a time without checking my sugars or doing my shots

14:13 At first I wasn’t having crazy blood sugars but then once you do it so much and you’re not getting what your body needs then of course complications happened

14:25 Now being older I’ve been able to know what foods affect me a certain way though that’s not to say there aren’t times that I don’t eat food that I actually like and want. I just know that I have to adjust for it

14:43 So I think for me what really helped as an adult was just recognizing that there’s always gonna be a sacrifice that I’m gonna have to make but again I can work my diabetes around me and my lifestyle and the things that I want versus making my whole life diabetes

16:19 The cool thing with the pump is I have a sensor plus my pump. My sensor reads my glucose levels throughout the day and tells my pump what it is and then I have settings in there based upon my body size and my carb ratio because my carb ratio would be different than yours and how that affects your sugars so all of that helps fine tune and keep my numbers more steady which in the long run is just going to help me live a longer more fulfilling life

16:58 10 years ago I wasn’t the healthiest. I wasn’t taking care of my diabetes as well and now I’ve had to deal with some side effects

17:10 So that is the other thing with diabetes is that if you don’t take care of yourself now you might not see the effects today but 10 years from now you’re going to be dealing with that and so to pay it forward to my future self I try to make changes and live as healthy as far as making sure I am eating on a daily basis

17:32 Exercise has not been my strongest suit but it’s something I’ve been trying to incorporate more lately especially working from home the last year so trying to stay more active and my a1cs have been around six the last few times that I’ve gone to get checked and that’s all because of the pump 17:53 The pump really got me to where I am with my diabetes right now

18:21 When my blood sugar wasn’t controlled, I had several hospital visits which were all DKA visits which stands for Diabetes Ketoacidosis

18:46 Pretty much what can happen in those situations for a diabetic is if your blood sugar gets to be so high you develop ketones and sugar in your urine

19:02 My organs function the same way as yours does and it doesn’t recognize that my pancreas doesn’t work, so if you’re getting sick and you your kidneys are spilling out sugar to help offset that

19:15 My kidney is doing the same thing but you have the insulin triggering to kind of balance that out to where I don’t, so what will happen is is that my levels will just get really high. Usually, I throw up a lot can’t hold anything down. My heart rate is super high and I’m pretty much putting myself at risk for a heart attack, seizures, or strokes

19:43 So during those hospitalizations they’re pumping up my fluids because my heart rate’s really high and I’m dehydrated

19:54 I get really sick and exhausted and you lose oxygen to your brain so you’re just not as sharp and those were more the immediate effects of poor habits and not taking care of myself

20:29 Earlier in 2020, I started noticing I was having really weird spots in my left eye so I had to go see a specialist and luckily I don’t have like glaucoma, I don’t have diabetic retinopathy but because of being diabetic for as long as I had and I wasn’t controlled for a long time I started developing additional blood vessels in my eye

21:03 Your body’s not supposed to produce more blood vessels like once you have them but I started growing more blood vessels which hemorrhaged and leaked and that’s why I was seeing spots and having trouble with my vision

21:17 So pretty much for the last eight months I’ve had to go in get testing done every month. I’ve had five different eye injections done. I’ve had a laser treatment done so those are all effects of just having diabetes for 20 plus years and having a chunk of that not being healthy

22:04 From the age of 17 up until about 22 or 23 was when I wasn’t as controlled and taking care of my diabetes

23:51 I’ve been with my husband for seven years and he’s been a huge support. Both he and his family are fantastic and amazingly supportive

24:42 Support is huge because diabetes is a 24-7 battle. There’s no down time. There’s no pushing the pause button to say hold on, I just want to take a moment to breathe

25:29 I would be lying if I said I didn’t have emotional or mental times where I’m breaking down or I just loathe my diabetes because

I do. Just this morning I had to get up to change out my sight and I was just like I don’t want to do this!

25:51 There’s always going to be moments like that but I think if you just allow yourself to feel those things versus trying to suppress them that goes a long way because I think for me a long for a long time I wouldn’t allow myself to be negative about diabetes and that kind of sounds weird when I’m trying to motivate people but I think just being honest with your feelings and thoughts about it is a huge step but then realizing that this is a small thing in the grand scheme of things for me to live life and be happy and to be as normal as possible

26:48 And because there’s so few of us type one diabetics, taking those opportunities to interact with one another

26:59 That’s why I’ve been a little bit more active on Reddit lately because I’ve been trying to find a local group here in Arizona

28:30 I was like you know what, this isn’t who I am. This doesn’t define me

28:37 It’s helped shape me into who I am but I can still do everything that I want but just make accommodations here and there for my disease