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 

