Would you blame these two for their diabetes?

Some do.

Doesn't it make you sad to think of good people blaming the two little girls in this picture for having diabetes, as if they could prevent it?

Well, the babies in the photo above are my sister and me as nine month old twins a decade before diabetes would hit us both. Hard. This past Easter marks my 21st year with diabetes and still the comments of a mostly ignorant public can leave me a bit off-kilter. Just the other day someone blamed me for my diabetes (at a restaurant). I had a few things to say to the lady. Unfortunately, it's a story that is anything but unusual. There are a lot of misconceptions out there and so much ignorance and confusion about type 1 and type 2 diabetes. It makes living with a chronic disease like diabetes all the more challenging.

Having diabetes takes its toll emotionally as well physiologically aspects of controlling the disease. As is stated in an article on Diabulemia (click to read), while the emphasis on food and weight in diabetes treatment is necessary, it can seem to mirror an eating disorder mind-set. No longer can we eat whenever we feel the urge. In the beginning especially, my entire schedule rotated around food, multiple insulin injections and dozens of glucose checks.

The University of Toronto proved the point when its researchers found that type 1 diabetic girls are two to three times more likely to develop an eating disorder than their non-diabetic peers. Unforunately, doctors and nurses who work with diabetic girls can be hesitant to use candor when screening those at risk for diabulimia because they fear that instead of preventing the disorder, they might plant a seed. Combine that with the tricky connection between depression and type 1 diabetes and we're in tricky territory.

It's a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality, and medical professionals seem to dismiss the fact that our health depends on how our head is taking it all in.

Endocrinologists should be more willing to refer patients with insulin-management problems to mental-health practitioners," says Deborah Mangham, M.D., assistant medical director of the Park Nicollet Eating Disorders Institute in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. "The mental-health part of diabetes can't be ignored," she says.

Most of us agree with the last statement. Like you, I have had my share of struggles. I've seen therapists over the years who help me deal with some difficult feelings around diabetes (among other things). While I was never diabulemic (a term I had never heard of before reading the article in SELF), I did contemplate skipping my insulin injections as a teenager. I remember feeling fat and wanting to be skinnier. I remember thinking if I just stopped taking my insulin I wouldn't feel hungry and I could lose weight. Luckily for me it was just a thought and I never did it, but the potential was there. Like many young girls in high school who are developing curves and unsure of a body that is filling out, my body image was distorted and getting diabetes when I was hitting puberty definitely influenced the way I handled it early on in my life.