I am in my school's musical "Music Man." I play the role the mayor's daughter Gracie Shin. It is great and we are performing this week! I am way excited and nervous! In one of the songs I have a little solo! I hope I can nail it! Now the defaults of being a type 1 diabetic actress. First off I'm always afraid that my blood sugar will be low and I will have to go off stage and eat something or my blood sugar be high and have to take some insulin. Another one is how will my cast members act to seeing me prick my fingers and take shots? Some people can be understanding and others will not. Now what I do at plays is I take a bag with 15 free snacks (Which are snacks I can eat without having to take a shot of insulin) and low snacks with a bottle of water. Nothing bad has ever happen so far during a performance but I cannot say that for play practice. One time I was in this play and we had rehearsal after dinner and I had taken too much insulin and my blood sugar dropped to 35. (The normal range for my age is 100-180) and I had accidentally forgotten my bag with snacks for me. I told the director I needed to hurry and call my mom. (When I get that low I get confused) The director thought I wasn't feeling good so she grabbed her teenage son and told him to drive me home. I started to cry and tell her no. I tried and tried to tell her but she didn't understand me. Luckily my mom had come early to pick me up and she saw me crying and came to my rescue with a regular Pepsi. If I had been forced into that car with that boy I might could have gone into a diabetic coma (Which is when my glucose gets too low I pass out and have a seizure because I need sugar) It scares me to think I could have died. But it makes me aware to be careful and have people be aware. I get embarrassed when my Mom tells people I have diabetes but I understand she does it to be safe. She wants people to know so they can help me if I need it. I hate having to worry about these things when I should be having a good time acting, and behaving like a normal teen. What other teen do you know that has to worry about every piece of food that goes into their mouth? That's the life of a type 1 diabetic actress.(:
-Avery the T1D
