Welcome @daisymae !
It’s really not that unusual to never have met other T1’s. As a dentist I’ve had several T1 patients over the past forty years, but if not for them I would never have met a real live T1 in person!
And my wonderful mom was pushing cinnamon on me 45 years ago!
PS: i forgot to mention that i am 53 years old. also, my husband used to be an Elite Marathon runner, and, as he is not D, he would eat and eat and eat and carbo load. i had this enormous resentment b/c, as i am certain that you may understand this type of situation, i could do nothing but sit and watch him eat without any consequences nor put any thought into managing any carbs or whether or not to calculate a dual bolus, etc. i feel like i have to be a neuclear physicist sometimes just to get a new food group/meal to not spike or go crazy low. (for this reason, i tend to frequent the same restaurants and order the same exact meals b/c i have had the experience of learning exactly how to bolus for that type of food. if there is a food that i like tremendously, i will experiment and experiement until i get the formula just right, or close to it, so that i can enjoy eating it whenever i feel like it w/out worrying whether i will sink or swim.)
there is so much more, but i doubt it will interest anyone, so i will end here. thank you all for your warm welcome to this site. it has already been enormously helpful.
i swim so i cant exactly wear warm gloves, but my hands yet so cold from being in the pool that i have the exact same problem getting a substantial blood drop out of my finger tip when i jump out of the pool to test. what a PITA 
Hello! Thanks so much for the invitation to join! I am Jessica, Type 1 for almost 25 years. Diagnosed at age 20 as a junior in college. I am from the midwest, but have lived in New England for 21 years. Currently live just outside Boston (can throw a stone from my home into the city) with my husband and two daughters. I’ve always been MDI (humalog/lantus), with two very brief excursions during pregnancy with trials on the insulin pump (it was not for me). I’ve kept my eye on CGM technology and as soon as it becomes a bit more foolproof and insurance coverage is a no-brainer, I will likely jump on board. A1c is consistently at 7.1, which is comfortable for me with the lifestyle we lead right now. When I was pregnant A1c was 4.9 to low 5s, but always teetering on lows, which was scary.
I was a very light poster on the tuDiabetes board (mostly in the area of blood sugar management during exercise - I am a tennis nut!) and got some great information from Eric, which led me to this forum. I am in the middle of a thyroid “crisis” and will be diagnosed with either Graves’ disease or deQuervain’s subacute thyroiditis tomorrow. Bloodwork is leaning toward thyroiditis and my fingers are crossed. I did the radioactive iodine test at the end of the week, though, and will get definitive results tomorrow. I’ve felt miserable for the past few weeks - so frustrating, especially when New England (brief!) spring is arriving!
My diabetes care right now is managed by me (I will always consider myself the captain of my medical team!) and my primary care physician. Like many of you, I also have a close group of fellow diabetics, in my case type 1 moms that I met online when I was preparing to get pregnant with my eldest (she is 13)! I have also found that our tribe is so, so helpful in figuring out all things diabetes.
I am looking forward to getting to getting to know everyone here! Thanks so much for including me! Jessica
Hey Jessica!
Glad you could join us!
I hope your diagnosis is favorable. Let us know how it turns out.
Whenever you are ready, let’s get going on the exercise page and talk about how to handle tennis. 
Hi @JessicaD. Welcome aboard!
I was also diagnosed around the same age, just twenty years earlier. I’ve also been on MDI since MDI has been around, never really interested in a pump.
CGM is a real game changer. It will get you from 7.1 to 6.5 or less without any lifestyle changes. (unless you test now a couple hundred times a day 
). I’ve been using a Dexcom for eleven years non-stop and could not imagine being without it.
Jessica, great to see you join us!
Keeping our fingers crossed for you. My 12-yr-old T1D son has thyroid antibodies, so will likely face this challenge eventually (Hashimoto’s?).
Love to see how you write this! Relationships with endos/ PCPs are a bit of a sore spot for many of us here.
Great! You are luckier than us. We don’t have anyone here (we live in the country).
It just occurs to me that there is an interesting question on pregnancy prep right now: https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/what-did-you-do-differently-when-trying-for-pregnancy/908. Maybe you’d consider giving your thoughts?
Welcome to FUDiabetes!
Michel,
If your son doesnt speak spanish, there are english schools (with a UK curriculum) and in selville there is a lycee frances. I dont know how good they are and they are private. the public school system here is, unfortunately, a mess, with focus very much on exams. like all the time. i am a teacher and worked in the system for a couple of years. they wanted me to give exams to first graders, it was all a bit much. but hey, if its only for a year, the experience would be worth it.
i dont know about how D treatment would be with regards socialized medicine. i would come with everything you could if i were you. i get 3 strips a day on it, but i had a primary student with t1d and he got 6 strips a day.
i lived in cordoba for 4 years and i have been in sevilla for 5. granada ive never lived in but supposed to be a bit hippy-er. andalucia is a great place to live. summer is coming now, which isnt so great-hot as hell-but cheap and cheerful and beautiful!!
let me know sooner to the date if youre coming. if you are thinking of coming in summer, id get a beach house on the coast or a place in the mountains for the summer. you dont want to be here in sevilla or any of the inland andalucian cities in the summer. they are empty and boiling!
Hello all,
I’m 28 and have had T1 for nearly 7 years. Diabetes has never liked to stay in one place for long; I have had to change my carb ratios and basal rates very frequently for no discernible reason. For a few years I tried to do the MDI schtick, 4 tests a day, but things got worse and worse and eventually burst at the seams. It took me a long time to recover, and I encountered resistance from medical professionals towards most of the tools that work for me.
I’m now I’m on a pump, CGM, and Afrezza. Before Afrezza I used intramuscular injections for rapid-acting boluses. I use a combination of sugar surfing and a more traditional “predictive” approach depending on what I am doing and how my diabetes is behaving. I have developed a smartphone and smartwatch app to show me CGM readings in the way that works best for me.
Occasionally diabetes would do very odd things—for instance, not requiring any basal from say 10am to 10pm for a few months. Recently my endo thought to have me tested for anti-insulin antibodies, and the result came back “very high”. In certain cases these antibodies attach themselves to insulin molecules, rendering them inert for several hours until they break off again; the net result is that boluses get stretched out over a much longer time period than they should. I am pretty confident that this only happens some of the time, leading to some very frustrating effects. Afrezza is a godsend with this.
I hope my experience can help others who are struggling!
Welcome! That is an awesome looking cgm smart watch… I am interested to hear how to make that work! Afrezza changed my life too. Hope you like it here!
@mentat Welcome! Sounds like you are definitely on top of the beast.
Awesome that you were able to program apps to display your Bg and traces. Have you heard of or tried xDrip+? It will not only display your CGM readings on a watch, but it will also act as the CGM receiver. Lots of other really helpful doodads in it too.
@mentat, welcome! Love your watch BG display, that’s great!
Have you considered looking into openAPS? Looking forward to your posts in the forum!
@mentat, welcome.
One question: with the insulin antibodies, is that not a risk with Afrezza? Is the antibody to the insulin molecule itself (which I thought already developed prior to diagnosis anyways), or to the preservatives or excipients in most insulin.
Or is the issue just that antibodies to insulin don’t typically target lung tissue?
Hi Doc,
I remember those teststrips for urine and how frustratingly little info they gave. I was wearing overnight contacts then, and they would hurt when I was low and wake me up. After urine strips, I used the BG Chemstrips for a years, cutting them lengthwise so I could get twice as many for the money in my insurance free days. I didn’t want to go to a meter, because of the money, and because I read the accuracy data on them, and felt like it was better to remember I was getting a ballpark figure. So thankful for my Dex4, named “Piper,” and meters that are more accurate, and easy to use.
Hi Everyone,
I am happy to be a part of this forum. I was diagnosed with T1 at age 20 in 1979. I went to the student health center because I had the classic symptoms (which I thought were maybe a thyroid problem or something because my parents take thyroid). They said that I needed to go to the hospital. Luckily when I walked out the door, I ran into an acquaintance with a car, who could take me there. It was a shock, but I took it on with a passion, and started logging everything I ate and exercising hours every day. Several months after getting started on insulin I had a honey moon for months, where I didn’t need any insulin at all. I started spilling sugar in my urine again when I was out at a remote camp counting migrating geese and cranes and other waterfowl. We were eating a lot of starchy food, and I didn’t have anyplace to walk. (We were up in towers in the middle of a very muddy river delta.) I didn’t have any insulin with me. When I got back to my home town, and went on insulin again I had a much harder time accepting the whole thing. That was a dark time for me. I started out with NPH and Regular and urine test strips. I hated having to eat for the NPH peak 6-8 hrs after I took my morning dose. It was a huge help to switch to blood sugar test strips from urine strips. There have been so many improvements in technology in the 38years I’ve had D! I remember my A1C came down a whole percentage point when I switched from Regular to Humalog. I tried a medtronic pump for a while in my 30s but I had trouble with sites and hated the resulting super high BGs, and the extra variable to consider when troubleshooting highs. Later I tried a Dexcom7 and had trouble getting the sensors to work well for me with that system. When I found out about RapidCalc insulin calculator app when I was on MDI it really helped me. I loved that it kept track of insulin on board for me and helped me calculate reduced dose for exercise. A couple of years ago I started on Medtronic 530G and a Dexcom 4 named “Piper.” I still have trouble with the pump sites. I am using the metal needles now, because my body reacts to plastic and plugs the little cannulas up. And they often kink for me. I do okay with the metal infusion sites, and I totally love love love Piper. I have way less hypoglycemia now and my A1Cs are consistently below 6.5 for the first time in my life. I eat a moderate carb, celiac (obsessively gluten free) and dairy free diet. I have a lot of autoimmune diseases in addition to D, but I stay pretty active nevertheless. I like to walk in the woods and on the beach and go cross country skiing in the winter if we have enough snow.I like to contra dance (a lot like square dancing). In the summer I am in an improv comedy troupe with some fun people here. I live in a small town in Alaska with my husband, a dog, and a cat. We have two grown children. Our daughter and son-in-law live a 12 hr drive away, also in AK, and have two beautiful boys (the ones in my profile picture). Our son lives in our town, and is marrying his true love next month!!! I so appreciate all the experience and caring that people share here.
Wow that is quite a story, I can’t imagine how rough it must have been to know you were spilling sugar but not be able to access insulin. Alaska certainly adds an extra dimension to diabetes. I have never shaken the feeling the first time I took off from Fairbanks, and had the spooky feeling that comes from seeing no man made structures for hours in any direction except the pipeline. Coming from the lower 48, you can’t do that in many places.
Glad you are here! Your experience and knowledge will be appreciated.
What a wonderful intro yours was! Really looking forward to your posts 
