Introduction

One day in December 2019 my family was involuntarily signed up for one of the worst games ever contemplated by our universe. And we were signed up... Permanently. It’s a game from which, absent some future scientific miracle, there is no escape.

When viewed through a game design lens, it is intriguing the degree to which the onboarding and ongoing management of Type 1 diabetes literally turns every video game design best-practice on its head. To experience Type 1 diabetes is to experience something that takes all of the best practices involved in creating a wonderful, engaging, rewarding game - and inverts them to create the most frustrating and punishing experience possible for the patient and caregiver alike.

Realizing that I wasn't sleeping much in those first few months, and would therefore forget what the experience was like, I decided to write it down. The content sat in Google Docs for many years. I decided to publish it as a blog in March 2025, in the hope that it might provide some dark humor to parents of the newly-diagnosed - and that they should know they aren't alone.