Transcript: Season 1, Episode 1: Hey Diabesties, I’m Mila!
Mila Clarke: Welcome to the first episode of your diabetes podcast. I am Mila Clarke.
I live with Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults since 2016, and I am just super excited to actually put this first episode out into the world.
I really love being creative overall. if you know anything about my background, I am just
Mila Clarke: I’ve always doing something and the idea for this podcast came about a long time ago.
As I was thinking about all of the support that I’ve gotten along my journey with diabetes, but also the loneliness and the shame and the stigmas that I felt about living with diabetes.
And so I wanted to create a podcast for people who feel that loneliness for people who feel like nobody gets it or they’re judged or stigmatized for something that isn’t their fault.
I just wanted to use this first episode as a way to tell you about my story and really just underscore the importance of support when it comes to living with diabetes.
And so I mentioned earlier was diagnosed with diabetes in 2016. I was 26 years old and I was just feeling off.
Mila Clarke: I felt like I was sweaty all the time. I wasn’t getting any sleep like I was getting up in the middle of the night and even during the day at work going to the bathroom probably three or four times an hour.
I felt like I could drink a gallon of water and nothing would quench my thirst. I was losing weight rapidly and at the time I was overweight and so I kind of thought of it as a good thing and so did my doctors.
But I eventually just got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and when I went to my doctor, they tested my blood sugar and my A1C my blood sugars were at 323 milligrams per deciliter.
00:05:00
Mila Clarke: Which is super high, but A1C was over 11% and at 26 years old. That’s pretty alarming.
Right I especially thought of diabetes and at the time I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so we’ll talk a little bit about my misdiagnosis.
But at the time I thought diabetes is an old person’s disease. did do? How do I have this and a lot of that sentiment was also echoed by my healthcare provider in that you’re 26 years old.
Why is this happening with you you should not be in this place. You should not be in this condition and basically you need to work harder to gain Better Health and what my doctor didn’t know and what I’d like didn’t get a chance to explain was I was already exercising for two hours a day.
I was already cutting my carbs was making all of my meals at home at the time,
Mila Clarke: 2016 juicing was really hot. So I’m juicing I’m going running.
I’m doing all of these things and being active but I am still having these severely high blood sugars and a few years prior to my diabetes diagnosis. I had gotten a diagnosis of PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome. And so even with that in my medical history, my doctor this just seems like big insulin resistance.
You need to work harder. You need to lose weight and for me.
Mila Clarke: It was kind of like a frustrating experience to be honest because I feel like I’m already doing all the things I should be doing. why isn’t this working? And I think along the way I just felt ashamed I felt alone.
I felt like I did not have the ability to do this by myself. And so I started writing a Blog and a lot of you may know me from that blog. It’s still exists. It’s called The Hangry Woman and I started writing about the journey of overall health.
I started writing about recipes that I loved to make that really help to balance my blood sugar. I just started putting out into the world feelers because I was like, I’m 26. I want to know how I can go to the bar with my friends and still enjoy a night and still have diabetes and live well with it and it just became this
Mila Clarke: just mission for me that I didn’t want else to feel stigmatized. I didn’t want anyone else to feel alone. And I wanted everyone who was diagnosed with diabetes to feel like there’s someone on the path with them to feel like there’s somebody there ready to encourage them.
And so that really became my mission with my blog and my Instagram and my YouTube channel. I really just wanted people to have ease of access to education.
I wanted people to know that they were not alone and that they were not the only ones going through this thing and I wanted people to know
Mila Clarke: diabetes isn’t your fault and it is hard to get that out of your head. It is so difficult to understand and realize that there is not anything that you did wrong here. But you do have an opportunity to change your health you do and diabetes makes you a healthier person people scoff at that people laugh at that when I say that people are like how can diabetes make you a healthier person?
It’s because you are paying way more attention to your health probably than anyone, And There’s no competition in chronic illness in the ways that we deal with chronic illness. However, I think when you think about having a progressive illness like diabetes one where you can do every single thing, right and you can still end up with complications where you can
Mila Clarke: In the manage your health manage your time manage your body manage your wellness and still come out with an adverse effect on the end. I don’t think people realize just how jarring that is and just how jarring that realization is. for me really just thinking overall about the journey to where I am today starting in 2016 with a misdiagnosis getting rediagnosed with a lot of which is a slow progressive form of type 1 diabetes just before my 30th birthday and
00:10:00
Mila Clarke: I don’t know it was one of those things where it was like nobody should have to do this alone. Nobody should have to do this alone.
And so I felt like I wanted my own space to be able to tell my own story. I wanted the ability to be able to talk to My listener one-on-one and just let you know that I’m here for you. And when I say that it’s not empty. It doesn’t mean that I want anything from you. It doesn’t mean that this is a tit for tat relationship that you do something for me. So I do something for you. No genuinely, I am here for I’m here for what you need. I am here ready to answer your questions. I am here to help I am in this awesome transition of my life.
Mila Clarke: Where I love Communications is my background. I’m a journalist by trade by study mostly a writer. So, podcasting is new for me. But I do video often and for me, I wanted to do more I felt like all of the ways that I was treated like s*** in the Healthcare System. I didn’t want to happen to anyone else.
I didn’t want that to be somebody’s starting point somebody’s story and I wanted people with diabetes to always know that they have somebody with them that someone’s got their back and that person is me and I will have your back to the end.
Mila Clarke: just believe it when I say it, my ultimate goal in everything that I do is to ensure that people with diabetes have the tools the resources and the accountability that we all need to be able to live our best lives with diabetes and All that I feel like I can do to make that a reality is to keep sharing and to keep encouraging people and to keep letting people know that I am here for them. So that’s why I started this podcast. That is why I decided that I wanted to be here truly in my experience with diabetes. I have just been
Mila Clarke: think I’ve been through the ringer. I think I’ve had probably a very typical experience in the healthcare system if we’re being honest, and that’s exactly why I’m becoming a registered dietitian.
I’m going back to school for nutrition. I am just trying to be an overall more helpful person because I feel like people diabetes deserve it. say but care we deserve the ability to walk into a healthcare provider’s office and not be ashamed.
We deserve the ability to understand our numbers. We deserve the ability to be able to get to a place with our health that we want to get so we can be happy and we can be healthy and we can be here for our kids and our grandkids and we can be here for our pets and we can be here for our loved ones our spouses our friends and
Mila Clarke: We live a life without burden, but we also live a life that is connected and that has friendship built into it because diabetes is the club that nobody wants to join. But once you’re in the club you kind of realize that there’s value in all of the people that you will meet and all of the people who have your back.
So in this podcast what you’ll find is, basically my friends and I talking about diabetes, whether they are friends of mine who’ve known me for my whole life and they don’t have diabetes but they’ve seen me go through this process or whether they’re friends that I met because I had diabetes because I was in a place where I just wanted friendship from people and I have gained some amazing friendships met some amazing people know so much more about diabetes because of all of the people that you’ll meet on this podcast.
Mila Clarke: I think something that is also really really important to me here is that we talk authentically and openly about diabetes. So we’re going to talk about embarrassing stuff or stuff that feels off-limits. We’re gonna talk about sex. We’re gonna talk about what it’s like when you get sick with diabetes and you’re throwing up and you were just Icky.
We’re gonna talk about the hard stuff. We’re gonna talk about the good stuff and nothing is off limits here. And I think the great thing about this space is that nothing is off limits and we’re talking here as diabetes.
So I know that this episode is short. I know that it’s just an intro. I just wanted to give you a little bit more background about what this podcast would be like and I also just wanted you to know that someone is here for you. Someone has your back. It’s me. I’ve got your back and you’ve got this.
00:15:00
Mila Clarke: Love, your diabestie.
