Who Is Melissa? Name: Melissa Age: 32 Occupation: Programming Manager Goals: To get my diabetes under control.

Melissa was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 14. Since then she has ridden a blood-sugar roller coaster complete with countless seizures, numerous hospital stays, and one coma.

The main cause for this bumpy ride? Herself. "When I became a diabetic, I remember my doctor telling me that there was a cure right around the corner. That in ten years I probably wouldn't even have diabetes. That it would be cured. I really wanted that to be true, and from then on, I pretty much tried to live my life as if I didn't have diabetes."

Of course, like all chronic diseases, diabetes isn't a condition you can ignore. Melissa's lack of control resulted in low blood sugars so severe that she would go into seizures, often resulting in physical harm to herself and sometimes to those that tried to pull her out of the seizure.

Since her diagnosis, Melissa has changed doctors, changed insulin types, changed insulin amounts, and changed the way of determining insulin amounts. Some treatments worked for a while, but soon she would bore of the constant attention diabetes demanded from her and the battle for control would again be lost.

The battle would not be won until Melissa learned that the first thing that had to change was her attitude toward her disease. She was a diabetic and by the time she was 32, she started acting like it. "The first step really was to get an insulin pump. All these years I had rejected getting one because I didn't want a constant reminder that I had diabetes," she explains. "I would tell friends, 'Sometimes when I go out I'd just like to be able to forget that I'm a diabetic.' Obviously, that really wasn't working for me."

Although Melissa has been on the pump for a mere three months, her life has changed significantly. The seizures have stopped, she rarely has a blood sugar level above 200 (a daily occurrence before the pump), and she finally has energy again. "Something had to change. I realized that my lack of control wasn't just hurting my body but was affecting everyone I loved, too. That's when I took control."