Give this type one a new lease on life

Over the past few years, I have written and re-written this little piece, trying to encapsulate why I am the perfect candidate for a donation. I have listed out all my tragic life events, detailed what a deserving person I am, explained my shortcomings in great detail but I suppose that's why I never went through with any of the drafts - because they did not feel genuine.

So here's what I will be going with. I am not an extraordinary person, I am not special, there is nothing particularly notable about me and like every other person on this planet, life has treated me rather harshly. Even though I am not remarkable or special, I do still deserve a happy, peaceful life and without your help - I can't do that.

17 years ago I was diagnosed with T1 Diabetes. The information we have available for diabetes now, is not what we had back then and for a large part of my diabetes journey, I was under the impression that my diagnosis was my fault and that the disease was the end of life as I knew it. Check your levels, take your shots, never touch anything sweet ever again and eat 6 meals a day. That was it, that is what I was told to do and I followed that flawed routine for 15 years hoping I was doing enough. I wasn't.

In 2020, I blacked out at work and ended up in hospital with kidney complications. I had lost over 28kg in the space of a year and my health was in tatters. Life was moving so fast and so viciously that I had taken diabetes as a cherry on top of my "terrible life" instead of using it as an anchor to ground me. I was overwhelmingly negative, incredibly angry and half the person I am today.

Since then, I have taken every measure possible to try and turn my life around, understand the disease I live with and treat it with love and kindness.
If you have diabetes, or know someone who has it, you will know how exceptionally hard that is, how emotionally and physically taxing it is to live with Type One.
Being on your own in this little world, financially, is harder than it should be to put into words. I simply cannot afford my disease and I simply cannot afford not to afford it.

Growing up the way that I did, kind strangers almost gravitated towards me, I was a kid and I was alone and they had something small to offer that could make a small difference. Someone almost always offered, someone almost always lent a hand. Being a kid in a terrible situation meant that someone always wanted to do what they could, I did not have to ask.

Being an adult is different and that's okay. We're meant to do this thing on our own and we try, we do our best, we push, we fight, we battle - we do it.
I have always been alone in my diabetes, even as a kid and if you're diabetic - you understand. Its your disease, your thoughts, your choices, your mistakes, all your battles are in your head, it is a heartachingly lonely experience.

For 15 years, I was on this journey alone, I was on this journey like a robot, mimicking the actions of someone who is alive, life was just too much and I dealt with it as best as I could.

It is only the past two years that I have been present, present in my diabetes journey, present in my journey of this life and trying everyday to live consciously. I cannot erase my mistakes, I cannot undo them, I can only be grateful that this body has carried me so far, carried me so willingly and carried me with a sickening amount of love, of kindness.

I am not a stranger to help but I am a stranger in asking for it but I have to, to ask, to beg, to plead for the kindness of strangers to help me once more. This time around, I am asking for a chance at life, at living and not just surviving - as I have for as long as I can remember.

It has been 17 years around the sun with diabetes and it is taking its toll on my health. I do not want to be a spectator to that, I do not want unfortunate circumstances to be the end of my journey.

We cannot control the cards we are given in life, we can only control what we do with them and I am choosing to ask for help to deal with mine. This is not something I can do on my own and I have tried relentlessly to make my dream a reality but right now, that's not working out - and right now is the only chance I have at some sort of future.

I am asking for help to pay off my car and to help me with getting an insulin pump. The money I spend monthly on my installments could go a great deal further in allowing me to move up on my medical aid plan so that I can get more benefits like monthly CGMs and pump consumables. This technology exists to make my life easier and I need it.
All I want is to live peacefully with my disease, this disease that has taught me so much, changed me in ways I could never imagine, I want to live with it and not be suffocated by it.

When I am am on my feet at work, my levels are all over the place and there is nothing I can do, I don't have the time to constantly check and constantly inject, it just does not work and this is where I am struggling. This is where I need the pump to make the decisions I am not quick enough to make. To help me predict and prevent situations I often find myself in because I do not have the time to tend to it as it needs.

Without a pump, I will never be able to reach my targets, not in the time frame that I need my numbers to change, not before diabetes takes my kidneys or my eyes, not before it takes from me what I cannot get back.

Two years ago, I was half the person I am today, but I am only a quarter of the person I want to be and can be, with your help.

If you can, please, from the bottom of my heart, help.
I want to make another 25 years, I want to be a therapist. I want to see the world, I want to live, to breathe, to experience a life outside of constant fear and worry.

Those are all my dreams and they are on hold without the first, which is just life.

Help me live.

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