Having diabetes means that there will be a lot of new things that you will have to do or think about, some of them very basic to your day-to-day health—such as checking your blood sugar or giving yourself insulin shots. There will be new challenges in dealing with the people in your life—not only your family, your friends, and your classmates, but the new people that you meet every day.  You will need to plan ahead a lot more, especially when you will be staying away from home.

But even though it brings so many changes into your life, diabetes is not your whole life. Yes, it is a new part of it. But it is only a part of it. It is important to remember that you are still you, and that there is much more to you than this disease.

As you learn to take charge of these new tasks and challenges, and get better and better at handling them, you will probably feel much more like the old "you" again . . . or, you may find that you are becoming a new and even stronger "you." Either way, chances are you will still have many of the same goals and dreams you had before you got diabetes (and possibly a few new ones!), AND you will still have every reason to pursue them.