My Cappuccino Was Getting Cold in the Parking Lot While My Life Was Changing

My cappuccino was getting cold in the parking lot while my life was changing.

Twenty-one years ago this month, the bank I worked for was going through an acquisition. As part of the transition, employees were offered a healthy lifestyle assessment.

The incentive?

$75.

Which is about $125 in today’s dollars.

And like any newlywed, getting paid $75 for a finger poke and someone to tell me I was healthy was, as they say, a no-brainer.

So, on my way to work, I stopped and bought myself a cappuccino.

When I arrived, I remembered I needed to be fasting for the assessment.

No problem.

I left my cappuccino in the car and headed downstairs to the basement of the bank, fully expecting to be back in a few minutes.

Instead, I got a diagnosis.

Type 1 Diabetes.

I was 26 years old.

It’s funny the details we remember.

I don’t remember everything that was said that day.

I don’t remember all the medical explanations.

But I remember walking back to my car afterward.

It was an unseasonably warm June morning. The sun was shining and heating up the freshly laid blacktop in the parking lot.

I remember putting my hand on the car door handle and thinking how ordinary everything looked.

People were going to work.

Cars were coming and going.

The world hadn’t changed at all.

And yet my world had completely changed.

I remember thinking what a beautiful day it was.

And how different it suddenly felt.

What I couldn’t know standing there was that Type 1 Diabetes would become part of my life, but not the whole of it.

I couldn’t know about the husband who would walk beside me through it all.

The three incredible boys I would raise.

The 15 marathons I would run.

The thousands of miles, adventures, challenges, victories, setbacks, and lessons that were still waiting for me.

Type 1 Diabetes has been hard.

There have been scary lows, frustrating highs, middle-of-the-night alarms, and days when I’ve wished I could take a break from all of it.

But 22 years later, I’ve learned something important:

The diagnosis was a chapter.

Not the whole story.

And if I could go back and talk to that 26-year-old woman standing in the parking lot with her cappuccino and a brand-new diagnosis, I’d tell her this:

Your life is about to change.

But it isn’t about to shrink.

💙 Happy diaversary to me. Twenty-one years of showing up anyway.