It was Jon Kunneman’s 11th birthday.
Like many kids, he was looking forward to the presents, the appreciation, and the cake and ice cream. Kunneman got some combination of those things, but eating sweets would come with the same peace of mind after an unexpected “gift” he received.
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“My parents thought I was just growing, getting ready to hit a growth phase,” Kunneman recently told MMA Junkie. “I started getting weak. My body – I was peeing literally every 10 minutes. I would drink like two or three gallons of water a day and still be thirsty. … I remember one day we were at the College World Series. We were in line. It was a hot day, and I passed out in the line. They had to bring EMTs, and they found out my blood sugar was low, but they just thought it was because of the heat.
“Then the next day, my mom had smelled my breath, and she’s like, ‘Your breath smells fruity. It doesn’t smell right. Something’s not right with you. Let’s just go to the hospital and see what’s going on.'”
Kunneman’s blood sugar was 576 mg/DL. The normal range is 70-99 mg/DL. That day, his 11th birthday, Kunneman was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
“Happy birthday, right?” Kunneman said.
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Unlike type 2 diabetes, which is often caused by poor diet and lack of exercise, type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disorder where the body attacks its own insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The diagnosis came with restrictions, confusion, and fear. It would be a difficult adjustment for anyone, never mind an 11-year-old kid.
“I had people laugh in school when I would take insulin shots,” Kunneman said. “People would look at me like I was this weird kid who has to pull his insulin out and take a shot in class, lift his shirt up at 10 years old, and people looking at you take an insulin shot in class, or people would look at you weird in a restaurant when you gotta take a shot. … A lot of times as a kid people would ask, ‘Oh, do you eat too much sugar? How’d you get diabetes?’ and people just don’t understand that has nothing to do with it.”
For years, Kunneman struggled to navigate not only the physical toll but the social one as well. He did everything he could to pretend to be the average teen with a normal blood sugar, living a normal life. But it just wasn’t sustainable. He hit a point where he was done hiding – and the mental rain clouds cleared.
“For a lot of years I didn’t talk about it,” Kunneman said. “I tried to hide it and make it invisible. That’s the hard part with it as a kid: it’s an invisible disease, and people don’t know how brutal it literally is until you’ve been around someone who has type 1 diabetes. When your blood sugar is high, your head hurts. Your kidneys hurt. You can literally feel your blood in your body, and it feels like glass sometimes. I’ve been in training camps where I’ve had high blood sugar, and I’m just rocking myself back and forth in the fetal position because it’s so uncomfortable, and there’s no way out of it until insulin kicks in. You take your shot, but it takes 45 minutes or an hour to kick in, and it’s honestly miserable, and it’s the rest of your life. At this point, I’ve taken conservatively like 30,000 to 35,000 shots, but probably closer to 40,000 or 45,000 shots in my life to stay alive. As a kid, that’s a very daunting thing.”
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Kunneman’s fear was more deeply ingrained from watching his grandfather deteriorate from diabetes firsthand. It was a bit traumatic, seeing what his own fate could be if he didn’t keep his condition under control.
“He had a whole medical ordeal where he almost died,” Kunneman said. “His colon was leaking feces into his body, and he came out of it with type 2 diabetes. But he didn’t take care of himself, and I watched him slowly (fail). His legs stopped working. I literally watched him wither away, and to see that could be me when I’m older. To face that as a kid is super scary. Then they tell you all about, ‘If you don’t manage your blood sugar, don’t check your blood sugar, don’t take insulin at the right time, this is what you’re gonna look like, or this is what’s gonna happen to you.’ That’s such a daunting thing for not even a teenage kid to be thrown at in life. So that definitely was tough, for sure. It still is tough to this day.”
