I am not my diabetes.
There’s so much more to me than just an illness. I’m Korean American, born in New York, raised in Delaware, and now living in New York City. I struggle with depression, anxiety, and body image. I’m a daughter, a sister, a roommate, a girlfriend. I’m an ex-athlete figuring out what that means as an adult. I’m a professional in finance as a woman. I have so many facets and complexities of my identity and Type 1 Diabetes is just one of them.
My parents moved to the states over 30 years ago, seeking a better life than the one they left behind. They stayed to give my sister and me opportunities they never had. I grew up in a primarily white neighborhood in the suburbs of Delaware always feeling slightly out of place. Subtle racism was a staple and I just got used to it. Over the past few months, we’ve seen a rise in Asian Hate and it breaks my heart. I go back to visit relatives in Korea and I’m not quite Korean. I’m a New York native but it would seem to some that I’m still not quite American. When I was first diagnosed, I was misdiagnosed as Type 2 Diabetic and my severe DKA was overlooked because of my heritage. The GP took one look at me and told me to rethink my lifestyle and I probably got diabetes because “well, you know, Asians eat a lot of rice.”
Over time, I’m seeing the diabetes community slowly becoming more inclusive but I also still see Asian Americans often overlooked. Politicians and companies actively choose to overlook the Asian demographic because we’re “statistically insignificant.” From a marketing or campaign standpoint, I get it. But from a human standpoint, can you imagine how it feels to be told you’re insignificant?
Then I think about why inclusion is so important – it’s not just so that I can placate my feelings of being “other than,” it truly is about life or death when it comes to things like my diagnosis. If we shoot for inclusion and education, I can’t imagine that GP would have sent me home when he should have sent me to the hospital. No one in my family knew how to handle Type 1 Diabetes and when I looked for literature, not a lot existed beyond the very White male dominated space. I tried to give my mom a book on Type 1, but with English being her second language, she got stuck on a lot of the jargon. The lack of inclusivity has very real consequences.
I’m open about my story because I want to challenge the norm; tell people, maybe I’m not significant, but I’m here. I want other Type 1 Asian Americans to know they’re not alone either. It’s tough, it really is, to be so “other than” but it’s also forced me to face who I am and really know who that girl is. It’s complex and it’s messy but that’s me.
