Personal Narrative: My Cultural Experience With Diabetes

I have been through some different cultural experiences in my life and recently noticed how discourse plays a significant role in the experiences and how it has created who I am today. A significant experience that I have been dealing with since I was six years old is watching my little brother deal with diabetes. Diabetes is considered to have its own culture because “diabetes has become a habit for the people who deal with it every day, and it is not inherited, but learned” (Kulkami). Diabetes has become a major part of my everyday life when I am dealing with my brother because I have had to learn and adjust my everyday choices just as much as him. Even though I am not the one that has to physically live with the illness, I have to help …show more content…
The day he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is crystal clear to me; we were at daycare when my mom rushed home from work to pick us up to only go spend three days in the hospital. I remember going to the hospital thinking that he just had the flu, but after being there for hours and watching the doctors run so many tests on him, I knew it was not just the flu. The very beginning of this culture affected me in a minor way, because I had to go stay with my grandparents even though I wanted to stay with my brother and sometimes I have miss work or school to take him to a doctor’s appointment if my mom cannot get off work in time. Of course, he and I have the typical brother and sister relationship, but going through this significant change with him has only brought us …show more content…
Technology advances every day and has been a lot of help to me when helping my brother. The goal of the new technology is to “subtract hassle from living with diabetes – fewer injections and finger sticks, less math, less data overload, less pain, and less worry” (diatribe). I recently went to a diabetes class to learn about the new system and how to work his new technology. This affected my normal understanding of the diabetes culture, because we had used the same technology for eight years and then to just suddenly change everything was difficult. I chose to take the class with my brother, because when something goes wrong with his blood sugar I need to know how to fix it, if my mom is not around. One of the main reasons I go to the doctor’s appointment with him and make a change in my life is because I am with him every day and when I was not familiar with the culture and something would go wrong, I had no idea what to do so I would panic, which did not help