Author, Katherine Marple
My name is Katherine Marple. I am a freelance writer and the author of two diabetes related books called "Wretched (this is my sorry)" and "Deathly Sweet". I often share my real life experiences about my diabetes opinions and past mistakes, hoping to help others going through a similar phase in their lives know that they are not alone and that it is possible to be better. I am in no way claiming that the way I live my life is the only possible route or that my life is perfect. I believe my life is very very good, but health-wise I am still recovering and trying to stay afloat. I think life with diabetes (in my case, type 1 diabetes) can be extremely stressful and difficult. There are times when I've fallen flat on my face, ended up in intensive care unit or woke up with my husband testing my blood sugar and shoving cake frosting down my throat. It's not easy. But, sometimes diabetes does take a backseat in my mind. Like when I'm playing with my one year old daughter, when I'm holding my husband's hand, when I'm looking at the ultrasound monitor and seeing that my baby is healthy and active at six months gestation. In those precious moments, diabetes is in the back of my mind.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 14. Upon diagnosis, I was not only dealing with the hormones and emotional adjustments of adolescence, I was also learning to cope and accept a disease that wanted a piece of every minute of my day. Suddenly, I went from carefree teenager to someone who has to be concerned with how many carbohydrates are in a cracker, how much glucose and energy is burned when I run during gym period, how many units of insulin I need to inject to cover the sandwich I ate for lunch, and which injection sites had the best absorption rates. I also had to deal with the illusion that the only thing most teenagers had to worry about was how to fit in at school, and the fact that I was no longer a part of that group of carefree, invincible kids. I was now the student who had a free pass from teachers to eat or drink during class. The girl who left fourth period ten minutes early to go to the nurse's office to test my glucose. The sick kid who had a doctor's appointment every two months and came late to school because of it.
By the age of 16, I was anxious to be considered "normal." Over the two years after I was diagnosed, I had lost many fickle "friends" who used the excuse that they could catch diabetes by sitting next to me. I knew that it was really the fact that teenagers are so unforgiving for nuances that by sitting next to me during lunch or by admitting I was their friend, they were adding another difference between "them" and the "accepted". I had gained weight in those two years, which was much needed since I was diagnosed too thin, standing at 5'8". I was jaded by the questions from relatives who seemed to only want to discuss "Katherine with Diabetes" and not any other part of my life. I was tired of the doctors telling me what I could and could not eat, what time I needed to eat my meals and snacks, what range my blood sugars needed to be, and how many minutes of exercise per day I needed to partake in. I was exhausted by all the thinking, the waking up at 6:00am to test my glucose and inject NPH, and all the bruises across my stomach and my thighs from needles. I was pissed off that I couldn't just be a normal teenaged girl- that my years of adolescent discovery were tarnished by an all-consuming disease.
So, I started to skip meals to silently buck the system. I lied to my doctors about the meals I didn't eat and the insulin I didn't inject. When my mother noticed I was skipping dinner, claiming to be sick or riddled with too much homework for weeks, she began to be concerned. So, instead of starving myself, I would eat to satisfy her and to stop the questions. Then, I would go to the bathroom, stick the back of a spoon down my throat, and throw it all up. After a few months of doing this, I no longer needed to use a spoon or a finger because my gag reflex was so highly developed. I would purge until there was only bile left.
I didn't START to do these things to get skinny. I started doing them to feel like I had control over some portion of my life, no matter how small a part or how destructive the path. I never imagined it would overtake so much of my life.
After a few months, though, my habits started to become an obsession. During this time, I read somewhere that food will attach to fat cells in your body within one hour after eating. I don't know if this is actually true, but reading that gave me structure to keep myself in check and to make sure I purged soon after eating. If I didn't get the food out of my body within that hour, I punished myself by overeating in the middle of the night when no one else was awake to see me self-destruct. Seriously eating anything I could get my hands on. A package of deli meat, a jar of pickles, a whole carton of ice cream, the entire tub of last night's dinner. While eating, I would tell myself how disgusting I was, how unmotivated and undedicated, how WEAK. The guilt that consumed me after a binge eat like that would chew at me for days. I usually would starve myself to "cleanse" my body for three or four days after, once again relishing in the hunger pangs. Hunger pangs fade, I learned, once you bypass the two day mark. It's as if your body gives up and stops asking for nourishment.
Every time I ate a piece of food, it was all that I could think about: how long it was taking to digest, how soon I could get it out of my body, how my stomach acids were peeling it apart and dispersing it throughout my cells, never to be retrieved again. Purging became an obsession that took over many of my thoughts, much the same way that diabetes did as a newly diagnosed.
I started keeping a food journal where I would count every calorie that I put into my body alongside a list of every physical activity that I did so I could subtract calories burned. The days that I totaled less than X calories taken in, were the days that I would feel proud of myself. I would lay in bed on my back on those nights and run my hands across my protruding hipbones. If my stomach was slightly bloated or if my hip bones only lay flat with my stomach, I would starve myself the next day as punishment. I felt proud when I went more than three days without eating and without drinking anything but water.
I would continue to cook meals for my mother and brother, whom I lived with, but the idea of actually eating the things that I cooked made me feel entirely sick. Sometimes, while cooking, I would gag at the mere thought of what was sizzling in the pan in front of me. I ran from the diabetes disease that was threatening to control me, except I ran straight into the arms of the bulimic, binge eating, anorexic disease that was slowly draining me.
I kept this pace for over a year. I got back down to 110 lbs and learned to love the feeling of an empty, churning stomach. The knowledge that I had a secret that I didn't share with anyone helped me to feel secure. The doctors struggled to understand my waning control of my glucose, but attributed it to teenage hormone changes. My parents wondered why I was losing so much weight, but figured I was hitting a teenage growth spurt. I felt guilty for lying to everyone, but felt comforted knowing that even though I had to tell these people EVERY SHRED of food I ate while they calculated my pee, weighed me, took blood from me over and over and over again, I still had something about me that was personal and private. Like a poison that can't be detected in an autopsy.
Having these eating disorders and obsessive behaviors led me to having a minor case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every time I left a room, I had to flick the light switch five times, or however many times I felt I needed to flick the switch, in order to feel safe. Every time I used an appliance, I would shut it off and turn it back on three times to make sure it was off. I would lock the door when I left the house, walk down the driveway, turn around, walk back and lock the door again before I could feel safe enough to leave the yard. I never saw anyone for this, just coped with living with it for about a year. The first time I stopped myself from doing these habits, I was shaking with fear, heart palpitations and sweat because I seriously believed something horrible was going to happen because I hadn't flipped the light switch enough times.
I was an emotional mess, teetering on the dangerous edge of a destructive lifestyle. I am not proud of this period of my life. I don't think that I've ever admitted most of this to my parents to this day. But, I feel it is important to be honest because I know there are many adolescent diabetics who have done and will do the same thing. Going through teenaged years is tough enough, but add a chronic disease to it and you're likely to run into some emotional issues.
When I realized that I had exchanged one disease with lack of control for another, I knew it was time for me to get back onto my feet. Living each day according to calorie count and denying myself the food that I needed to stay energized and alive was not the same as ME being in control. My actions were allowing an eating disorder to run my thoughts and manage my whole life. It was the equivalent to denying myself insulin injections, which I require to stay alive. I needed both the injections and the food to survive and denying myself either one was allowing a disease to control me more than if I just dealt with the disease itself.
These days, I sometimes catch myself thinking about how I used to be with food. I have stopped myself from relapsing a few times over the past ten years by recognizing the symptoms. Some relapses can creep up on you when you least expect it. I went through some stressful times and didn't notice that I was restricting my food intake until a few days already into the episode. Now, I've taught myself to eat only when I'm hungry. I try to not eat according to the time of day or for comfort. Most days, I only eat what I want to eat- not forcing myself to swallow a hamburger at lunchtime if what I really want to eat is an omelet. I eat to fulfill my body's needs and to stay healthy. Feeding this way helps to avoid the guilty feelings associated with eating disorders, keeps my body satiated, and helps me to stay in tune with what my body requires to perform at optimal level.
Overall, I would say that I am in recovery. Some days are easier than others, but I haven't purged or starved myself for several years. My hemoglobin A1c results have been hovering around 6.0% for three years now. I work very diligently to maintain my diabetes care and to stay healthy. My eating disorders were literally a coping method that I used to deal with accepting a disease as a permanent part of my life. There are surely better coping methods available, but this is the path that I took. It's not always easy, but I try really hard to live my life without regretting my mistakes. I try to always move forward.
Even now, 14 years after diagnosis, I still have to step back now and then and re-accept this disease. Diabetes has tried very hard to steal so much from me. Un-related to the eating disorders, I've been in several insulin shock comas and multiple ketoacidosis episodes. I've struggled through my first pregnancy and now my last pregnancy, and I've dealt with all of the emotional issues associated with not having a body that works the way that it is designed to work. After learning to accept diabetes as a piece of what makes me who I am, I've come to realize that even "normal" or non-diabetic people have their own issues they consider imperfect. Diabetes is my flaw, and yet I believe it is partly the reason why I am so strong.
My mom told me that because of diabetes, I live life as if each day could be my last. I'm not trying to say that diabetes is going to outright kill me anytime soon, but she said because I've been through so much and have fought so hard to stay alive, that I appreciate every single moment that I’m here. I don't know if I would be able to live in such a way if I hadn't been diagnosed 14 years ago. I don't know if I would be the person that I am today if I hadn't been forced to grow up and to take control of my health at such an impressionable age. I have a one-year-old daughter, a husband, and I'm six months pregnant with our second child. I have to stay healthy and positive to be able to take care of my family that I've worked so hard to build. I am alive today and I will never give up trying to become the woman that I deserve to be, or the woman that my daughters will some day strive to emulate.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 14. Upon diagnosis, I was not only dealing with the hormones and emotional adjustments of adolescence, I was also learning to cope and accept a disease that wanted a piece of every minute of my day. Suddenly, I went from carefree teenager to someone who has to be concerned with how many carbohydrates are in a cracker, how much glucose and energy is burned when I run during gym period, how many units of insulin I need to inject to cover the sandwich I ate for lunch, and which injection sites had the best absorption rates. I also had to deal with the illusion that the only thing most teenagers had to worry about was how to fit in at school, and the fact that I was no longer a part of that group of carefree, invincible kids. I was now the student who had a free pass from teachers to eat or drink during class. The girl who left fourth period ten minutes early to go to the nurse's office to test my glucose. The sick kid who had a doctor's appointment every two months and came late to school because of it.
By the age of 16, I was anxious to be considered "normal." Over the two years after I was diagnosed, I had lost many fickle "friends" who used the excuse that they could catch diabetes by sitting next to me. I knew that it was really the fact that teenagers are so unforgiving for nuances that by sitting next to me during lunch or by admitting I was their friend, they were adding another difference between "them" and the "accepted". I had gained weight in those two years, which was much needed since I was diagnosed too thin, standing at 5'8". I was jaded by the questions from relatives who seemed to only want to discuss "Katherine with Diabetes" and not any other part of my life. I was tired of the doctors telling me what I could and could not eat, what time I needed to eat my meals and snacks, what range my blood sugars needed to be, and how many minutes of exercise per day I needed to partake in. I was exhausted by all the thinking, the waking up at 6:00am to test my glucose and inject NPH, and all the bruises across my stomach and my thighs from needles. I was pissed off that I couldn't just be a normal teenaged girl- that my years of adolescent discovery were tarnished by an all-consuming disease.
So, I started to skip meals to silently buck the system. I lied to my doctors about the meals I didn't eat and the insulin I didn't inject. When my mother noticed I was skipping dinner, claiming to be sick or riddled with too much homework for weeks, she began to be concerned. So, instead of starving myself, I would eat to satisfy her and to stop the questions. Then, I would go to the bathroom, stick the back of a spoon down my throat, and throw it all up. After a few months of doing this, I no longer needed to use a spoon or a finger because my gag reflex was so highly developed. I would purge until there was only bile left.
I didn't START to do these things to get skinny. I started doing them to feel like I had control over some portion of my life, no matter how small a part or how destructive the path. I never imagined it would overtake so much of my life.
After a few months, though, my habits started to become an obsession. During this time, I read somewhere that food will attach to fat cells in your body within one hour after eating. I don't know if this is actually true, but reading that gave me structure to keep myself in check and to make sure I purged soon after eating. If I didn't get the food out of my body within that hour, I punished myself by overeating in the middle of the night when no one else was awake to see me self-destruct. Seriously eating anything I could get my hands on. A package of deli meat, a jar of pickles, a whole carton of ice cream, the entire tub of last night's dinner. While eating, I would tell myself how disgusting I was, how unmotivated and undedicated, how WEAK. The guilt that consumed me after a binge eat like that would chew at me for days. I usually would starve myself to "cleanse" my body for three or four days after, once again relishing in the hunger pangs. Hunger pangs fade, I learned, once you bypass the two day mark. It's as if your body gives up and stops asking for nourishment.
Every time I ate a piece of food, it was all that I could think about: how long it was taking to digest, how soon I could get it out of my body, how my stomach acids were peeling it apart and dispersing it throughout my cells, never to be retrieved again. Purging became an obsession that took over many of my thoughts, much the same way that diabetes did as a newly diagnosed.
I started keeping a food journal where I would count every calorie that I put into my body alongside a list of every physical activity that I did so I could subtract calories burned. The days that I totaled less than X calories taken in, were the days that I would feel proud of myself. I would lay in bed on my back on those nights and run my hands across my protruding hipbones. If my stomach was slightly bloated or if my hip bones only lay flat with my stomach, I would starve myself the next day as punishment. I felt proud when I went more than three days without eating and without drinking anything but water.
I would continue to cook meals for my mother and brother, whom I lived with, but the idea of actually eating the things that I cooked made me feel entirely sick. Sometimes, while cooking, I would gag at the mere thought of what was sizzling in the pan in front of me. I ran from the diabetes disease that was threatening to control me, except I ran straight into the arms of the bulimic, binge eating, anorexic disease that was slowly draining me.
I kept this pace for over a year. I got back down to 110 lbs and learned to love the feeling of an empty, churning stomach. The knowledge that I had a secret that I didn't share with anyone helped me to feel secure. The doctors struggled to understand my waning control of my glucose, but attributed it to teenage hormone changes. My parents wondered why I was losing so much weight, but figured I was hitting a teenage growth spurt. I felt guilty for lying to everyone, but felt comforted knowing that even though I had to tell these people EVERY SHRED of food I ate while they calculated my pee, weighed me, took blood from me over and over and over again, I still had something about me that was personal and private. Like a poison that can't be detected in an autopsy.
Having these eating disorders and obsessive behaviors led me to having a minor case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every time I left a room, I had to flick the light switch five times, or however many times I felt I needed to flick the switch, in order to feel safe. Every time I used an appliance, I would shut it off and turn it back on three times to make sure it was off. I would lock the door when I left the house, walk down the driveway, turn around, walk back and lock the door again before I could feel safe enough to leave the yard. I never saw anyone for this, just coped with living with it for about a year. The first time I stopped myself from doing these habits, I was shaking with fear, heart palpitations and sweat because I seriously believed something horrible was going to happen because I hadn't flipped the light switch enough times.
I was an emotional mess, teetering on the dangerous edge of a destructive lifestyle. I am not proud of this period of my life. I don't think that I've ever admitted most of this to my parents to this day. But, I feel it is important to be honest because I know there are many adolescent diabetics who have done and will do the same thing. Going through teenaged years is tough enough, but add a chronic disease to it and you're likely to run into some emotional issues.
When I realized that I had exchanged one disease with lack of control for another, I knew it was time for me to get back onto my feet. Living each day according to calorie count and denying myself the food that I needed to stay energized and alive was not the same as ME being in control. My actions were allowing an eating disorder to run my thoughts and manage my whole life. It was the equivalent to denying myself insulin injections, which I require to stay alive. I needed both the injections and the food to survive and denying myself either one was allowing a disease to control me more than if I just dealt with the disease itself.
These days, I sometimes catch myself thinking about how I used to be with food. I have stopped myself from relapsing a few times over the past ten years by recognizing the symptoms. Some relapses can creep up on you when you least expect it. I went through some stressful times and didn't notice that I was restricting my food intake until a few days already into the episode. Now, I've taught myself to eat only when I'm hungry. I try to not eat according to the time of day or for comfort. Most days, I only eat what I want to eat- not forcing myself to swallow a hamburger at lunchtime if what I really want to eat is an omelet. I eat to fulfill my body's needs and to stay healthy. Feeding this way helps to avoid the guilty feelings associated with eating disorders, keeps my body satiated, and helps me to stay in tune with what my body requires to perform at optimal level.
Overall, I would say that I am in recovery. Some days are easier than others, but I haven't purged or starved myself for several years. My hemoglobin A1c results have been hovering around 6.0% for three years now. I work very diligently to maintain my diabetes care and to stay healthy. My eating disorders were literally a coping method that I used to deal with accepting a disease as a permanent part of my life. There are surely better coping methods available, but this is the path that I took. It's not always easy, but I try really hard to live my life without regretting my mistakes. I try to always move forward.
Even now, 14 years after diagnosis, I still have to step back now and then and re-accept this disease. Diabetes has tried very hard to steal so much from me. Un-related to the eating disorders, I've been in several insulin shock comas and multiple ketoacidosis episodes. I've struggled through my first pregnancy and now my last pregnancy, and I've dealt with all of the emotional issues associated with not having a body that works the way that it is designed to work. After learning to accept diabetes as a piece of what makes me who I am, I've come to realize that even "normal" or non-diabetic people have their own issues they consider imperfect. Diabetes is my flaw, and yet I believe it is partly the reason why I am so strong.
My mom told me that because of diabetes, I live life as if each day could be my last. I'm not trying to say that diabetes is going to outright kill me anytime soon, but she said because I've been through so much and have fought so hard to stay alive, that I appreciate every single moment that I’m here. I don't know if I would be able to live in such a way if I hadn't been diagnosed 14 years ago. I don't know if I would be the person that I am today if I hadn't been forced to grow up and to take control of my health at such an impressionable age. I have a one-year-old daughter, a husband, and I'm six months pregnant with our second child. I have to stay healthy and positive to be able to take care of my family that I've worked so hard to build. I am alive today and I will never give up trying to become the woman that I deserve to be, or the woman that my daughters will some day strive to emulate.