4 pods, 3 more for redundancy…check. 1 sensor, 2 more for redundancy…check. Ketostix, test strips, lancets, alcohol wipes, good lord I really do use a lot of things don’t I? I hope I got everything…oh goodness I forgot the insulin. How could I forget the insulin?!? I ran up to the fridge to grab all the insulin I needed.
The year of my diagnosis, I heard about this camp called ID Tech, a programming summer camp in Madison. I was so excited to go, it was an overnight camp on a college campus with a bunch of smart people teaching and a bunch of nerds to spend time with. For me, it was basically an epic slumber week long slumber party. I had already signed up before diagnosis, and I think my parents knew I would be absolutely crushed if they said I couldn’t go. Unlike Minnikani though, they couldn’t hang around me all day to make sure I was alright. I remember my dad was always stressing for months before that I learn how to be a more responsible doser, and learn to take care of my nights and wake up to my alarms if I was to be able to go. I think that was his way of coping with the idea of his recently diagnosed son being so far away from him. In the end, my parents called the leaders of the camp, we made sure there was a medical professional there, that I could store my insulin. We made sure my parents could call someone if for some reason I was unreachable. We had a plan for how to do it, we just had to be careful.
I remember meeting at the lobby of a college dorm, getting a lanyard, and a half hour later my parents were off! I was on my own now! Like usual, people asked about my bag, or why I was injection as soon as I saw pizza poxes for dinner. I had lost my shyness around diabetes by now, especially for these people that I wasn’t going to see again after ID Tech. All the campers were interesting (most of them were older than me), and the councilors were fun. That night we barely did anything else than get to know each other over pizza, and play Werewolf (a game I now own because of that camp). I got introduced to my roommate for the week, let’s call him Alex. That night, I barely remembered to store my insulin in the fridge, but it had been drilled into me enough times by my parents that I did it. I fell asleep that night in a college dorm, and it almost felt more fun than I imagine most actual college freshmen feel on their first days.
And that feeling remained. Every day started by walking to a beautiful cafeteria for breakfast. I never knew what I was eating beforehand, but I made sure to dose for lots so I could match my dose at the buffet (maybe treat myself to a pastry…every day). During the day, we were coding in computer labs, exploring campus, eating, and doing group activities. Pokémon GO came out a few days before the camp started, and, oh boy, I and that group of nerds went crazy over it. I remember catching Ponyta in the dorm common room waiting for my turn at Super Smash, and walking with both the campers and councilors, searching for shadow Pokémon.
Managing my diabetes wasn’t unendingly easy, what with all the complex carbs we were eating, but it helped that we walked everywhere, so my body was pretty routinely active. I made sure my red medical bag never left my sight (still to my shame).
Night was a different story. We ate an hour or so before we went to bed, and it wasn’t always easy to calculate carbs. I slept with my phone next to my bed with my alarms the loudest they could possibly be. If I woke up to them, great, otherwise my parents would call me. Night after night, I would be awoken every 20 minutes by a low alarm or high alarm, or my parents calling me to tell me to eat more. It felt empowering to finally take care of my blood sugar on my own, but it did a number on me.
Every day I was a little more sluggish, though still energized because I was having so much fun. Every night it was harder to wake up to alarms. Until, eventually, I didn’t. On the 5th night, I was exhausted. It must have been past midnight, I had been low, and had already taken so many carbs that I thought I really must go up to a stable BG. I knew it must’ve been taken care of in my head, even if my sensor still read low. I passed the hell out.
It was still dark out when I heard a soft, “Kaelan, Kaelan,” and a shaking of my covered feet. I didn’t even open my eyes, still in a dreamy haze. “Kaelan, you’re low.”
“No, I took care of it.”
“You’re dad called us Kaelan, you need to wake up.”
I wearily opened my eyes to two silhouettes at the foot of my bed, the camp director and a councilor. The combination of sleep deprivation and grogginess made me head swim. I rolled over, and checked my phone. It took my eyes a few seconds to focus on the screen. Oh shirt. I had gone up and right back down again. I was in the 50s and had been there for over an hour.
“You need to call your dad Kaelan.”
“Yeah, ok, you’re right, thank you, sorry, to uhhh, bother you with the whole, thing.” I looked across the room. Ugh, my poor roommate, he was curled up in a ball in his bed trying to ignore all of this and catch some shuteye. I called my dad. He was on the highway to Madison to pick me up, apparently speeding as if he was on the autobahn. He told me to stay awake. Easier said than done, I thought to myself. I continued talking to him on the phone. He sounded regretful as he told me the only thing he thought we could do was bring me home. He had been calling me for so long and I was just knocked out, we couldn’t risk another night like this; I could’ve died. I hated that I agreed, but it definitely wasn’t sustainable to keep doing it this way. Plus, I was embarrassed to hell that my dad had to call the camp director to wake me up. For the last two days of the camp, I would sleep at home, and come to the camp in the morning. It was only a half-hour commute, not the end of the world. I started packing, not too hard to do. I made sure to pick up my insulin, and I met my dad at the car outside the dorms. In the dark, I got in, basically fleeing the complex, leaving some notes on Snapchat to tell people why I would be missing when they woke up. I fell asleep in the car on the way home.
In the morning, when I arrived back at the dorms, all the overnight campers had already had breakfast. I explained to those that asked what had happened, but that I would still be doing almost everything with them. I was really nervous about it, but it didn’t actually put a big damper on the camp for me. It was a bummer that I couldn’t hang out after with the group to have dinner together or hang out playing board games in the common room, but it was only for a couple of days.
I “graduated” the camp with everyone else at the end of the week, and brought my lanyard home with a little USB drive with my own text adventure game on Javascript. My first excursion away from home was a partial success, but it almost got very bad, and I no longer complained to my parents that I could take care of my alarms every night anymore, I had learned better.
Growing up T1D 