Thriving with Type 1 diabetes

THRIVING WITH TYPE 1

Work-lunch balance

CATHERINE MILLER, who is 26 and lives in West Chester, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 15.

"I wasn't really surprised because my mom has it, my grandmother and grandfather had it, a couple of my uncles have it, so it was inevitable for at least me or my brother to get it, and I was the lucky one."

It threw her for a loop initially. "I was 15 and they were giving me all sorts of medication," she says. "But I knew it was going to come."

Taking the time to eat right for blood-sugar control was her major challenge as a teenager.

She worked for a dry cleaner. "One of the hardest things, especially in retail, is eating three meals a day. Trying to sit down and eat lunch during lunch hour just wasn't happening.

"So actually making time to say, 'Look, guys, I need to go eat' - that was probably the biggest change . . . actually making myself stop what I was doing and take a break, eat something, check my blood sugar, see what was going on.

"They [her employer] were pretty good about it," she says.

Today, she's better about eating right, although admittedly not perfect. As a busy CVS pharmacy technician, she still faces some work-lunch balance issues. "Eating a balanced meal three times a day - realistically, nobody does that every single day," Miller says. "So, I really just try to be honest in what I eat.

"I try to keep a food log and write down everything I eat, make sure I'm counting my carbs properly and doing the equations properly to make sure I'm giving myself the right amount of insulin to keep my sugars down."

She was fitted with an insulin pump last spring, which lets her infuse the medicine into her body without the bruising she'd been enduring from the injector pen she used before that. And she got married earlier this month, so she now has a partner in managing her blood sugar.

"My husband has been very adamant about making sure that I check it and making sure that I eat right."

Despite having fibromyalgia, a disorder marked by chronic pain, Miller also is newly committed to walking two or three times a week. "We have a puppy, so I try to walk him," she says. "Actually, he walks me." *