26 going on.... 80

So, I definitely have shingles. 
The dormant virus that causes chickenpox... that can become active again at any time.
Often seen in people over 60.
Or in those who have a weakened immune system.

And to think I was happy to get carded at the casino yesterday. The guard told me I looked 18... 3 days before I turn 27.  Then come today, I find out I have shingles.  Blah!

I read a variety of type 1 diabetic blogs, and a majority of them are written by PARENTS of children with diabetes.  Most who were diagnosed under the age of 4.  I am so very thankful to have been diagnosed with this at 26, instead of 6.  It's been a hard adjustment for me and I more or less understand what's going on!  I can't imagine worrying about your child who can't verbalize or understand what's going on. 

Soon after my diagnosis I developed anxiety.  I just didn't know it at first.  My heart would race, my stomach would hurt, I'd break out into a cold sweat, feel like I wasn't breathing right.  Scary stuff.  I actually ended up at the ER one night after a particularly bad one.  A few tests, $250 co-pay, and a IV shot of Ativan later I was on my way back home. 

Prior to the major panic attack, I went to a general practitioner regarding my symptoms.  On paper, it seemed thyroid related, and I was happy that he didn't write of my symptoms as anxiety right away.  I had chest x-rays, EKGs, a normal echocardiogram, a bubble echocardiogram, Halter monitoring, blood work.  Everything came back more or less normal. 

So anxiety it was, and my PCP wrote me a prescription for xanax to take on an as needed basis. 

What I think caused my anxiety, in no particular order:
1.  Wedding planning
2.  Thinking, if my pancreas suddenly stopped working, what else is going to just stop working?
3.  My new diagnosis
4.  Fear of dying in my sleep due to low blood sugars, even though I've never had a problem with overnight lows
5.  Trying to come to terms with the fact that I am dependent on a medicine to keep me alive, yet this same medicine could kill me if I took too much, or didn't eat enough to cover what I took, etc.  What if I was kidnapped and I ran out of insulin before anyone found me? (For real, that crossed my worried little mind)

Luckily, at my 3 month "just wanted to see how you're doing  since we diagnosed you" check up with my endocrinologist, I brought up my recently developed anxiety and she sat and talked with me for a good 30 minutes about how I had been feeling.  Even after she was running behind with her morning schedule because of car trouble or something that morning.  It really made me feel better about how I had been feeling. 

Thankfully, my anxiety has definitely decreased over the past few months.

XOXO,
Ashley