I
n November of 2009, a special elec-
tion in New York state meant that
school was cancelled, so my mom
decided to take my sister and I into New
York City for a girl’s day. We planned to shop
for hours at our favorite stores, stuff our-
selves with classic New York pizza for lunch
and venture to Midtown Manhattan. Before
we left for the city, my mom explained that
I would need to give a urine sample to the
doctor. Since I had never really had to go to
the doctor for anything major, aside from
the pneumonia I had gotten in August two
months prior, I was skeptical, but I quickly
forgot about it as we drove into the city.
Under any other circumstances, I would
have been having a blast, but this girls day
trip was different. I was too tired to walk
around, too busy thinking about when I
could get my next bottle of water and too
focused on how badly I needed to use the
bathroom to really enjoy myself. I tried to
ignore how I was feeling and relish the day
to the best of my ability, but I passed out
from exhaustion the second we got into the
car for the ride home.
My first stop when I walked into the
house was the bathroom, which had be-
come a part of my normal routine for the
past three months, and then I asked my
mom for ice cream as a snack. After get-
ting me ice cream, she checked the answer-
ing machine on the landline. She noticed
she had nine missed calls from the doctor,
so she called my doctor’s office back im-
mediately. The next thing I knew, my mom
grabbed the ice cream out of my hands as
she frantically called my dad, and we were
getting back into the car.
After driving for what felt like hours, we
arrived at a hospital 30 minutes from my
house, where the doctors were expecting
me. Yet, unlike the doctors, I was not ex-
pecting anything that would happen that
day.
As I sat in the hospital bed, feeling con-
fused, hungry and scared, I was told to get
comfortable. I was told I’d be there for a
while, and I tried my best to tune out the
grumbling inside my stomach as the doctors
emphasized the importance of conducting
tests on an empty stomach and pricked me
with needles.
Words were thrown around the room.
Words with meanings I didn’t know. Words
that scared me: “Juvenile Diabetes,” “type
1,” “manageable,” “treatable, not curable,”
“injections” and “pancreas,” just to name a
few.
The word pancreas was particularly new
to me. I had never used, heard or seen this
word before, but the doctors kept mention-
ing it to me and my parents. While my par-
ents tried to understand what the doctors
were saying, their faces scrunched up with
concern and focus, I sat in my hospital bed
feeling like I was watching somebody else’s
life, in disbelief that this was actually hap-
pening to me. It didn’t take long for the doc-
tors to realize how lost I was in this sea of
new information. After a few minutes, the
head doctor sat at the end of my hospital bed
and asked me if I was familiar with the game
Pac-Man.
Pac-Man is an arcade game in which the
player navigates the Pac-Man icon through
a maze containing various dots, known as
Pac-Dots, and four multi-colored ghosts. The
goal of the game is to accumulate points by
eating all the Pac-Dots in the maze, complet-
ing each level of the game. My doctor told me
to think of my pancreas as the Pac-Man icon
and the process of how my body functions as
a type 1 diabetic as the whole game.
The function of the pancreas is defined
as a gland that produces enzymes that are
released into the small intestine to help
with digestion. It also contains clusters of
cells called islets. The cells in these islets
produce hormones such as insulin and glu-
cagon, which help to control the level of
glucose (a type of sugar) in the blood. Simi-
lar to Pac-Man eating the dots, my pancreas
needs to eat the carbohydrates that enter my
body. Without eating the carbohydrates, my
body cannot function properly and move on
normally, just like Pac-Man cannot move on
to the next level of the game without eating
all the dots. Ultimately, Pac-Man will reach
game over if it fails to eat the dots, and my
body will begin to crash if my pancreas does
not fulfill its responsibility of producing
enough insulin.
Unfortunately, the doctor explained, my
pancreas had already experienced a game
over, which means the insulin hormone had
stopped being produced and there was a
build-up of dots in my body. This build-up
was affecting my everyday life. I always felt
weak, I could never quench my thirst, I was
constantly urinating and headaches were
too frequent to keep count.
The doctor explained to me that I would
have to manually give myself injections of
insulin, which would act as the Pac-Man for
my body. The doctor used this analogy to em-
phasize the importance of taking care of my-
self — if I wanted to stay in the game of Pac-
Man, I had to be constantly focused and win.
The days following my diagnosis, I en-
tered a new world and my life became a
large scale Pac-Man game. Every nutrition
label became the layout of the game screen.
Every time I had food, it became a new level
to conquer and overcome. Every time I was
able to correctly follow my mom’s lead to fill
a syringe — with enough insulin to capture
the number of carbohydrates in the food
while keeping my blood glucose intact —
was a step in the right direction and allowed
me to progress.
My house became diabetic-proof. We
designated cabinets for all my new medica-
tions, a shelf in the refrigerator for my in-
sulin and containers around the kitchen to
put used syringes in. My mom hid the Hal-
loween candy I had eagerly collected only
a few days before. She would have to come
into school three times a day to give me in-
jections and pack me a different snack when
people celebrated birthdays.
The challenges didn’t end as I grew old-
er; rather, I learned how to respond to them
positively and with perspective. When I
was on a trip to Australia a few summers
ago, I wasn’t able to go scuba diving with
my friends because of my diabetes. Instead
of harping on the fact that I had to sit on the
boat and watch them swim below the sur-
face, I spent the day snorkeling and learning
about the reef.
You cannot technically beat Pac-Man,
just like there is no cure for diabetes. But I
have learned just how manageable this dis-
ease is and that it is possible to live a normal
life. It has taught me to deal with adver-
sity the same way Pac-Man deals with the
ghosts: finding new routes, taking it level by
level, remaining focused and diligent.
Almost 11 years after my diagnosis, I am,
like the rest of the world, living during a
pandemic. I find myself feeling the same
way I felt in that hospital bed 11 years ago:
confused, scared, overwhelmed, anxious
and unprepared. The fear of having to ac-
cept, comprehend and adapt to a new di-
agnosis mirrors the way we all now have to
navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the
start of the school year.
This idea of being forced to adjust to a
new normal forces us to question how we,
as young people, should approach this new
year and this virus in a way that is productive
and smart. It is not easy trying to adjust to a
new normal, especially when it is a new nor-
mal we did not choose. And while analogies
like Pac-Man can help one comprehend and
adjust to a situation, the work, much like my
journey with diabetes, should not stop there.
In the coming months, we cannot deny our
diagnosis — we must stay focused on the re-
ality that we are still in the heart of a pan-
demic — because with that negligence comes
the obvious truth: game over.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
ILLUSTRATION BY AHMAD KADY
A new normal
BY MARISSA SABLE, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
Wednesday, September 2, 2020 — 13