My Diagnosis

25th January 2016. A date which has changed my life forever.

In the previous two or three months I had started experiencing some signals from my body which were clearly alarming me about something not going right: extreme thirst, increased urination and severe weight loss. At first, me and my family didn't pay that much attention to these dynamics, as we judged them normal for a phisically active teen as I was.

But then my mother, the woman who probably saved my life, began to suspect. And so, on that damned 25th of January, she brought me to my doctor. He did me a fingerprick and the verdict was unmistakable: 474 mg/dl. He immediately sent me to Milan's San Raffaele Hospital, where I was hospitalized for a week.

I'm aware that being admitted in that hospital has been a blessing for me, as it is a worldwide recognized excellence in the diabetes field. In fact, after a few days of adaptation, my new doctors began to teach me the basis of diabetes management. After a week of trials, they managed to set my blood glucose on reasonably stable levels, and, exactly one week after my admission to the hospital, they sent me back home with my new and extremely heavy load. I felt like I had to solve an impossible math equation susceptible to thousands of variables, barely knowing how to do a simple addition.

But, surrounded by the love of my friends and relatives, I found the strength to face that unexpected challenge.