Happy Tuesday! This post is another installment in my wedding series. If you want to read about what we did after the wedding read this post. Today I wanted to talk about that little white patch I wear on my arm.

No it is not a nicotine patch, heart monitor, or fitness tracker. You’d be surprised how many people think this is a nicotine patch. This is my insulin pump. It replaces the need for multiple daily injections of insulin, which being a type 1 diabetic I was taking about 10-12 injections daily.

I debated for a long time whether or not to wear my Omnipod in plain sight on my wedding day. My favorite spot to wear my pod is on the back of my arms, but if I wore it there it would definitely be seen in my strapless dress.

I got a lot of suggestions to hide the pod under my dress or to go back to manual injects just for that day. The problem with these suggestions were that the back of my arms is where I get the best absorption… and manual injections mean I would have to track my insulin delivery and inject every time I ate something (with a wedding dress on – mind you).

Then it hit me, why am I even questioning this? Of course I will wear my Omnipod on my wedding day and I will wear it loud and proud on the back of my arms because guess what….this is me. This is what type 1 diabetes looks like and I am not ashamed of it. My Omnipod has given me the best BG control of my life and on the day I need it the most I am questioning taking it off because people might see it? No, I will not hide it. This is me and I am proud of it!

Plus how cool will it be to look back on my wedding day pictures years from now (when there is a cure) and say, “Hey, you see that on my arm, that’s what type 1 diabetes looked like in 2016.”

So with the help of my incredibly talented maid of honor we bedazzled my insulin pump! I ate cake (gluten free of course), drank kamikazes, and didn’t have a stress in the world because I knew my Omnipod was working hard in the background to keep my blood sugars stable.

The day after the wedding a guy at the grocery store asked me, “How long have you been cigarette free? That’s one sparkly nicotine patch you got there!”

Once my bedazzled insulin pod expired I was sad to take it off because of how pretty it was, but I was happy to put on my new one…

Hopefully this can help educate people about what this invisible disease looks like #t1dlookslikeme