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Diabetes has ruined my life and aspirations, and I can't take it anmore.

First off, I would like to say, yes I am extremely depressed right now, but no, I am in no way shape or form suicidal.
Anyway, I have been diabetes for 3 years. I have been coping with it decently until now, when the effects of my diagnosis sunk in. Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to be in the military, specifically the air force. I had interests in the military when I was very young, but when it really occurred to me that I wanted to be a pilot in the air force, I was 6. I had gone to an air show, where I got the opportunity to see an A-10 warthog pilot and talk to him. After talking to him, I realized he was my hero, and I wanted to be just like him. He was the nicest person I had ever met, yet the most badass at the same time. It was to the point that I taught myself everything google has to offer about the A-10 warthog, the length of the GAU-8 Avenger Gatling gun's barrel, the bullet velocity, the max payload, how the engines work, ect. Later in elementary school, I had met two friends who had similar goals. One wanted to be in the marines, and the other wanted to be an F-22 pilot. we were best friends, we never talked to anyone else, and at lunch we always talked to each other about the military. Everything stayed like this until 7th grade. by the end of the year I had lost around 30 pounds. I was 4'8" and 59 pounds, and you could count literally every rib and vertebrae in my body. Then on father's day, my grandpa, who happened to be type 2 diabetic, thought it might be a good idea to test my blood sugar, so we did. I was so high that the meter didnt even read, and his faced turned so white that we were afraid that he might have been having a heart attack. After about 2 minutes of him bursting into tears and screaming obscenities, he finally told us that I needed to get into the ER as soon as possible. We waited in the line, not thinking it was serious, and when the receptionist finally got to us and we explained what happened, she turned pale as a ghost and screamed something into the phone, to which the doors bursted open and 4 nurses with a bed sprinted out and forced me to get in. I was 12. My blood sugar was 782, and they said that if I had fallen asleep that night, it would be extremely likely that I would fall comatose. I was in ICU for 4 days, and when I got out, I was doing fine, but I didnt want to tell anyone. The only people I told were my two friends. One of them laughed at me, and treated me as if I was some kind of freak. He is in my grade, which will be important to know later in the story. The other one was completely empathetic, he visited me every day, and he treated me as if I was his family. He is 3 grades of head of me, which like I said about my other friend, will be extremely important later. I dealt with it pretty well, I was doing fairly decent taking care of my numbers, and it hadn't really hit me how much it's going to change my adult life. Later on I realized that I couldnt enlist, but I never really payed attention to it due to me being so busy learning how to control my diabetes. Anyway, two years ago, my only friend who really understood me, the one who supported me through everything, enlisted into the marines and was deployed into the middle east a year and a half later. I hadnt heard anything, until one day his mother called me. She told me through tears that he had jumped on a frag grenade that was thrown into a trench line his battalion was tasked with defending. It is estimated he saved 3 people, including a staff sergeant. I was devastated, and wanted revenge. This is when it really sunk in, that I can do absolutely nothing for my country, and the heroes that risk their lives to defend it. I was a patriot at heart, and a useless liability on the outside. This leaves me where I am now, full with anger and the need for vengeance. But I can do nothing. Not for him, not for anybody who died for us. It also doesn't help that some of the other friends I have made over the years, either already have enlisted, or are planning on enlisting, but not me. I am taking classes that are putting me on track towards criminal justice, but it isnt the same. It will never be the same. The person who blew my best friend to smithereens is likely still out there, trying to kill more people that if I didn't have this god forsaken disease, I could fight along with or provide close air support for. That is my story. I am lost. I dont know what I want to do. I am more angry than ever, and nobody understand how I feel, no therapist or chemical that a psychiatrist would give to me will change how I feel.
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231441 tn?1333892766
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hi NotACommie,

I feel your anger and your pain, and your grief at the loss of your friend.  Particularly your pain that you feel there is nothing you can do to revenge the death of your friend.

Your friend saw something in you.  You can give him a legacy, not by fighting in a war for him to revenge his death, but instead by taking your life and making something great from it, despite your diabetes.

You may not be ready to hear this right now, but there are so many other ways you can fight for your country, despite your diabetes, even if not physically in battle.

You could go into medicine and change people's lives that way.  You could become a paramedic. A superb diabetes educator and take revenge on this, condition, by not letting it take other's people's lives and giving them control.

All people with diabetes are fighters, naturally, that is what it take to live with this condition.

I would give you the story of a man called Dr. Richard Berstein.  When he was 12 he was diagnosed with diabetes.  HE grew up and became and Engineer.  He had many complications from diabetes.  Luckily, he was a very smart Engineer, and his wife was a doctor.  He got hold of one of the very first blood sugar meters available and started testing his blood.  He worked out that people with diabetes needed to eat low carb in order to get excellent blood sugar control.  

No one would listen to him and what he was trying to tell people.  HE decided, if I can't make them listen, I should become one of them.  He then, in his early 40s, went back to school and became a doctor.  He is now 83 years old, still working, and reversed nearly all his diabetic complications.  He is still teaching people how to manage their diabetes to stop it having an impact on his life.     You can look him up.  He's a pedantic old dude....  he has a series on utube called "Bernstein Diabetes University".

I don't know if this story will frustrate or inspire you.  But I want to inspire you to use your sorrow and your anger to create and become something great.

You are welcome to reply or message me, if you want to discuss further.
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