People Said I Couldn’t Be Diabetic—But I Was: Girl’s Type 1 Diagnosis After Years of Symptoms

I can still recall the very first moment I realized that something was deeply wrong — not just a little off, but truly serious. It happened during my freshman year of college, in the spring semester, right in the middle of my Physics 211 midterm. The exam was sitting there in front of me, words and numbers printed in plain sight, yet it was as if I couldn’t actually see them. Everything was crystal clear on the page, but my mind couldn’t process it. My head felt like it was wrapped in a suffocating fog, and waves of nausea kept hitting me so strongly that I had to consciously fight not to pass out or throw up right there in the classroom.

I had studied for weeks for that test, but all that effort amounted to nothing — my score came back as a miserable 19%. That grade forced me to withdraw from the class altogether.

Over the next few days, my health began to deteriorate at a worrying pace. I was constantly parched, guzzling down drink after drink. I found myself needing to use the bathroom every thirty minutes and waking up four separate times each night just to go again. My body craved sugar endlessly — orange juice, ice cream, Gatorade, anything sweet I could get my hands on. My energy plummeted; I felt bone-deep exhaustion all the time. Then one morning, I woke up and realized my vision was so blurred I couldn’t even make out my roommate, who was sitting just three feet away. I dropped ten pounds in only three weeks.

At first, I chalked it all up to recovering from the flu I’d had a few weeks earlier. But as each day passed, it became increasingly obvious that something more was going on.

One night, I decided I couldn’t keep ignoring it. I didn’t know what was happening to my body, but I needed answers. Naturally, I turned to Google. I typed in every symptom one by one, and every single search led to the same possible explanation: Type One Diabetes.

When that realization hit me, I immediately called my parents. “No, Lissie, that’s impossible,” they insisted. “It doesn’t run in our family, and you’re not overweight.”

It didn’t add up to them — and honestly, part of me wanted to believe they were right. Everything I was reading online pointed in one direction, but all the stereotypes society had drilled into us about what diabetes looks like were telling me something else entirely.

Since Google couldn’t give me certainty, I decided to get a professional opinion. I phoned the overnight nurse at my local hospital and went through my list of symptoms. She put me on hold, and when she returned, her voice had an unmistakable edge of urgency.

“Miss Poyner? Go to University Health Services as soon as they open in the morning. Don’t wait for an appointment. And don’t eat or drink anything for the rest of the night.”

That was the longest, most restless night I can remember. First thing in the morning, I followed her instructions. The nurses ushered me straight into a patient room, drew blood, and asked me for a urine sample. And then came the waiting — which, in a doctor’s office, somehow feels like it drags on for an eternity, giving your mind plenty of time to race through every terrifying possibility.

Finally, the Physician Assistant walked in. Her face carried a look of sympathy — the kind that instantly told me my life was about to change forever.

“Your lab work came back,” she began. “Your blood sugar is 438 — normal is about 100 — and you have ketones present. I think it’s safe to say you have Type One Diabetes.”

Everything after those words became a blur. She told me to follow a very low-carb diet until my appointment with an endocrinologist the next morning. Suddenly, I was sitting with a Diabetes Educator, learning how to check my blood sugar and inject myself with insulin. She explained that I’d have to do this every single time I ate, taught me how to count carbohydrates, and walked me through the differences between long-acting and rapid-acting insulin. She said I’d need to carry glucose tablets everywhere, and warned me never to exercise unless my blood sugar was over 150. She told me that managing diabetes is a 24/7 responsibility, but that with proper care, I could still live a long, healthy life.

I remember feeling utterly overwhelmed, the thought looping in my head: If I have to live like this forever… I don’t want to live at all.

But the real struggle began after I left that office. Everywhere I turned, someone had an opinion or so-called cure. “You let them put you on insulin? That’s like testosterone — once you take it, your body stops making it!” “Just cut out dairy and wheat, and your diabetes will disappear!” “You can’t eat carbs. They’ll make your diabetes worse.”

It felt like I was being pulled in a thousand different directions. Some people even insisted I see another doctor because there was “no way” I could be diabetic — I didn’t “look” diabetic. I wasn’t “fat,” I hadn’t eaten too much sugar as a child, and I’d been a competitive gymnast growing up. They were convinced the doctor must have been wrong.

When I returned for my follow-up a week later, I unloaded all of my doubts and desperate hopes, practically begging for her to reconsider the diagnosis. I thought maybe something I said would trigger a moment of realization — that she’d see what she missed and tell me I was perfectly healthy after all.

Instead, she looked at me with compassion but firmly explained that’s not how Type One works. When I’d had the flu, my immune system had mistakenly attacked my own body instead of the virus, destroying the beta cells in my pancreas that produce insulin. That was it. No reversal. No misunderstanding.

It was at that moment my hope of a misdiagnosis crumbled completely, and for the first time, I cried about my diagnosis. It was real.

As impossible as it felt then, life kept moving forward. My endocrinologist suggested I take the rest of the semester off, but I chose to stay. I finished my courses and passed them all. My A1C — the three-month average of my blood sugar — dropped from 10.8% to 6.2%. I traveled to Curaçao and Costa Rica for research programs. I led a team every year in the JDRF walks. I joined the Penn State chapter of the College Diabetes Network. I even volunteered as a counselor at a camp for kids with diabetes. I graduated with an engineering degree and had a job secured before I even walked across the stage.

Now, diabetes is no longer the terrifying shadow it once was. It’s become something I actively advocate for — something I educate others about. It’s woven so deeply into my life that I can honestly say I wouldn’t be the same person without it.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy — far from it. Diabetes is a relentless disease, draining us mentally and physically every single day. But in the end, it’s made me stronger. And for that, I’m grateful.