Living with T1D
[00:00:00] Ileana Estevez: I was 14 years old.
[00:00:09] I was a ninth grade. Just started high school.
[00:00:15] It was May 9th embedded in my mind forever. I was a regular kid in high school, you know, very active. I was a cheerleader. So it was always. I was always athletic or like always moving around. I just started losing a lot of weight, but it was like, I was eating a lot. I was eating so much and losing the weight.
[00:00:40] So finally, two weeks past of me being that way, it was the night before I went to the hospital and I was fine. I didn’t realize anything different. Like I felt tired, but I thought it was just overworking. Um, so the night before I’m like, mom, dad, like I’m so thirsty, like please take me to seven 11, and it’s like 10:00 PM on a school night.
[00:01:02] I’m like, I just want the biggest Slurpee I can find like, it was that thirsty. So I had this huge Slurpee and the next morning I physically couldn’t get up.
[00:01:15] Like my bones were too heavy. That’s how weak I was. I was like, I can’t even. So at this point, I don’t go to school. And my mom’s like, I think we need to go to the hospital. Like, you’ve been losing weight now. You can’t move. I was nauseous, maybe have thrown up there the night before. So it’s like first thing in the morning.
[00:01:38] So they called an ambulance, which made everything so much more dramatic. The EMT is literally carried me in there. They literally just picked me up out of the bed and like carried me out of my home. And I was just never forget that image.
[00:01:53] And we get there and we start telling the doctor my symptoms and right away, like [00:02:00] the first thing she said was you’re diabetic. Alyssa to life-changing woman forever ever, ever, ever.
[00:02:18] I’m Eliana estimate by I’m 29 years old. And I work for the New York Mets and sports entertainment stage managing at the garden and on the high team at city fields. And I have type one type.
[00:02:33] There’s two kinds of diabetes in the world. There’s the kind of people get off of like age or lifestyle eating habits. And then there’s the kind that you’re born with. That’s hereditary. One is your body doesn’t make insulin anymore at all, which is type one and side two when you make, but not enough. I have type one.
[00:02:50] The one where I, my pancreas doesn’t make any insulin at all. It’s an entire. Not seek well, not secrets entire life that you have on the side of your real life. Every time I eat, I have to check my sugar, do calculations, take an injection before I even start eating. And then you have to realize like, well, how much exercise he did that day, this stress levels or all those things you have to map out when dosing your medicine, that you do yourself every day, but any other person will just make a meal and sit down and eat.
[00:03:41] And that’s be a big part also about, this is like, this is my sex life and relationships with guys, period. Because like I mentioned, like a lot of times now I wear those machines on my bodies. It’s like we’re, if it’s somebody I’m not that close with yet, and we’re looking to get intimate and have to sit there [00:04:00] and be like in the middle of making out and we’re going to get dressed and it’s like, oh wait, by the way, like I have diabetes and I’m wearing this machine anyways.
[00:04:06] Like, let’s keep going. So it’s always just something really funny and weird. That’ll kind of definitely change the dynamic or situations where, like I was saying, I’ve lived it. I would literally take it off before I get there. Cause I just don’t even want to open that kind of work. Or just don’t want them to know that, like I have any of that yet.
[00:04:24] Cause the forests are taking my shirt off and there’s this machine on my stomach. I wanted to be like, I’m not recording you or anything. Like I have an illness, like whatever insulin pump, like yeah. Let’s keep going. So it’s just, but at that point, like men are men and at the point where they were about to have sex, they didn’t really care about anything.
[00:04:39] So, so a lot of times I’ve had like no reaction at all. It’s like, yeah, sure. Like I don’t care. But then there are some times we kind of feel that shift and like the. Or they’re kind of like worried at this point, like, oh my God, is this girl going to like pass out on me? Like, it’s like those feelings.
[00:04:53] That’s why sometimes I choose to just rip that shit off right before I go meet up with the guys. It’s like, I don’t want, I don’t know what I’m going to get. Or if I can read the guy kind of, I’m like this a weird amount. I literally just like, not even wearing it. Um, or even with relationships where I’ve had a guy I was talking to for a while, that would call me.
[00:05:12] And because I had this insulin pump and it was like, back then, it was like, oh, tubing and wiring. And it was like a little machine I clipped onto my bra. So I was always tucked then. And it was like, yeah, you made it something cute out of it. Then there was actual relationships where I would completely, we would literally completely ignore it, like together.
[00:05:36] There are times where I will feel like even, I mean, especially in a relationship when you have sex, like up con or if you’re living with somebody or something and they want to, and your energy is so low and you just being like lazy during sex, where I feel like, damn, I’m really not going to, like, I’m going to lay here.
[00:05:53] So I literally don’t have the energy. If this person wants to do this for awhile, you know, like there’s, there’s moments like that, where I’ve had to think [00:06:00] about it, or I’m like, damn, I really don’t want. And I’m gonna, it’s kind of like, even with everyday life where like, if I, my sugar is high and I have work or anything, I can’t just stop.
[00:06:12] Like, so I know how to like push through or save my energy for certain moments.
[00:06:19] I’ve always had a very high energy active job. I can’t even count how many times I think I’ve worked when my sugar is really high and I don’t feel well, but I still. Like, I just feel like you learn to adapt and you learn, like to be like, all right, I’m going to sit for these 10 minutes. Cause I know for the next 30 I’m going to be standing like you adjust, you find your ways to make it work because you have to, like, there was no option of being like, Hey, sugar is high.
[00:06:47] Give me 30 minutes. Cause it’s just not like, it’s not real. That’s not real life. I feel like.
[00:06:57] There’s something actually called diabetic burnout. That’s like a thing that after repetitively doing this, or when you’re just repetitively don’t feel well, you just literally like crash and you’re like, I just can’t do this anymore. But again, I never want to be seen as a person like, oh, she’s, she’s probably making it up or like, you know, so I’d just rather not say so, like, there’s just so many different situations.
[00:07:25] And family. My mom has spent a couple of mother’s days in the hospital with me, like there’s moments. You’re like, oh, this isn’t fun. You know, but
[00:07:40] I have learned about myself that I feel like I’m very. And it kind of messes me up because then I go through every day with this and still do what I got to do. So then I look at people who are like, oh, I have a headache. I can’t do this. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. Like we can do it. Like you can do whatever you put your mind to.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] And I just don’t, I don’t know. I, it makes me challenge myself. It makes me feel stronger and challenge myself that I can do anything. Even with this, I guess I learned. Except that I accept that. I accept that. I can say that. I feel like I’m strong. Yeah, that, that was my, what I’ve learned about myself.
[00:08:28] I want more awareness for it because there’s even like breast cancer month. Do you know, does anybody know when diabetes awareness. It’s November. That actually way more people don’t know about, even though millions of people in America have type one diabetes.
[00:08:49] So I just feel like I would like people to take away kind of knowing more about what a diabetic being diagnosed with type one diabetes is.[00:10:00]