Meet Bastiaan

Hi everyone, my name is Bastiaan

I’m 26 years old and I’m from the Netherlands.

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on June 24, 2016.

And at the time, I was actually not in the Netherlands, but I was in the United States.

I was finishing up my studies over there, doing my final weeks of internship and for the last couple weeks before returning to Holland, I kept experiencing all kinds of classic type 1 symptoms.

So, I visited the local campus doctor, and based on my symptoms, she recommended to do a blood glucose test.

She did and the meter scored HI.

And at the time I had no idea what that meant.

I just thought that the meter was saying “hi” to me.

So, we checked again and again the meter said HI.

So, she immediately redirected me to the hospital.

After a couple of hours, they came to the diagnosis type 1 diabetes.

Obviously being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes impacts your life in a significant way on a day to day basis.

Before I was going to go back to the Netherlands I still had a couple of weeks, so I already… gave me time to get the hang of it.

And I think, you know, first of all with myself being quite positive and already having a routine really helped the people around me such as my family and friends accept it and also be relatively positive about it.

Because if the person with the actual disease is being positive about it, then why shouldn’t you be.