About the story

This story is based on real life events from my personal life. It’s a birds-eye view of my life after being introduced to diabetes through a series of tweets. The first tweet is about the day my mother told me she has diabetes. I had just graduated high school and she told me that she had been living with this my entire life and I had no idea. Through the next few tweets, I show that I notice when she’s having a high or low and how that affected my life. In tweet 6, I say that I got a new job. I had started interning at the American Diabetes Association helping out with fundraising events. When I started the internship, my eyes were opened to a whole new side of diabetes. I met people who lived with insulin pumps, I met children who attended a diabetes camp that was dedicated to learning to manage diabetes while having a fun life, and I realized that diabetes affects more people than I had ever imagined. In the 9th tweet, I talk about people marching. This is in reference to a walk fundraiser that I helped put on as part of my internship. That event motivated me to continue to advocate for the ADA even though my internship is over.

 

The American Diabetes Association started a campaign in October (which is diabetes month) called #DearDiabetes. The basis of the campaign was for survivors and their families and friends to write how diabetes has impacted their lives or pretend to speak to diabetes as a person. What would you say to someone that affects the lives of 300,000 people in Western PA? While I was interning, some of the employees wrote and shared their #DearDiabetes story. I tried to write one, but couldn’t come up with the right thing to say, until now. Since this campaign is about being personal with diabetes, it allows for an informal tone, which is why I wrote each tweet as if I were talking to diabetes as if it were a person.

 

I chose to use Twitter because the messages I chose to write happened to be short thoughts I had about thinking of the real-life events. Also, Twitter works with the hashtag #DearDiabetes so people can search the hashtag, retweet and like the post.

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I chose the ADA because it has become a huge part of my life and I think it’s an organization I will be involved with for the rest of my life. I’ve heard stories and met so many influential people who are living with diabetes. I’ve wanted to share my story with others because after interning with the ADA, I have a whole new perspective on diabetes. I wanted to incite some action to my readers, to never give up on fighting this disease.

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If I could change one thing, I would probably fix my last tweet. I would hand write the message, taking out the abbreviated words and add some extra sentences, take a picture of it, and tweet the picture.