I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 11. For the first 20+ years, I managed my condition the traditional way—checking my blood sugar multiple times a day, injecting insulin, and hoping I'd catch a dangerous low before it was too late.
Then, in 2019, I got an insulin pump. It was a game-changer at first—continuous insulin delivery, better control, fewer finger pricks. But there was something nobody told me: insulin pumps can fail silently. One night, my pump disconnected without any alarm. I didn't notice. I went to sleep with no insulin going into my body.
I woke up in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)—a life-threatening condition where your blood becomes too acidic. My blood sugar was over 400 mg/dL. I was hours away from a diabetic coma. I ended up in the emergency room, barely conscious.
That was my first brush with death from diabetes management failure.
Fast forward to 2024. I'd since switched to a continuous glucose monitor (CGM)—a small sensor that reads blood sugar every few minutes and sends data to my phone. I was doing well, checking my numbers regularly, and felt more in control than ever. One afternoon, I went to my mother-in-law's house. There was a dog there that I'd met many times before.
The dog had an odd behavior that day and bit me multiple times on my leg. In the stress and adrenaline of the moment, I didn't think clearly. I showered, cleaned the wounds, and told myself I'd be fine. Hours later, I checked my CGM: blood sugar completely crashed. The stress from the incident had caused an extreme low—my sugar dropped so fast I could barely stay awake.
If no one had been nearby, if I'd been alone driving, if I'd been asleep—that could have been it. That was my second brush with death.
Both times, I realized the same thing: I was relying on myself to catch these moments. A missed notification, a phone that died, a moment of distraction—any of those could be fatal. And I'm not alone. Millions of people with Type 1 diabetes live with this same invisible fear every single day.