becca

- got diagnosed quite young, probably when he was around 5 or 6 years old

- when he first started showing symptoms, especially the weight loss, mood swings, and fatigue, wilma and digby just chalked it up to him being a half-orc and tried to feed him more and teach him more breathing exercises, but when that didn't change anything, they took him to a doctor, and he got diagnosed really quickly because he was almost in DKA

- it took a while for him to find an endocrinologist that wasn't straight-up racist, either on purpose or through ignorance

- a lot of the diabetes management advice he was first given fully did not work because they refused to believe that half-orc biology might not be compatible with the guidelines that work for humans and elves, so he was going super low and/or high several times a day through no fault of his own and was absolutely miserable

- some of the unsavoury comments towards him were curbed by the fact that at that age, wilma and digby would have been doing most of the management, but appointments were still generally unpleasant experiences

- once he found a good endocrinologist, his management got so much better, and now he enjoys going to endocrinology appointments because it gives him the chance to catch up with a doctor who he has seen several times a year for a decade (he is dreading the fact that he is going to have to switch to a new endocrinologist when he turns 18 and is not longer allowed to see his pediatric endocrinologist)

- his diabetes contributed significantly to the bullying he received because not only was he the weird, quiet kid who got really angry sometimes, but he was also the kid who had to leave class or recess several times a day to go to the nurse's office so that he could get his sugar levels tested or get an insulin injection

- he also had to become a fanny pack kid to carry his supplies, which introduced its own set of issues

- once he got to middle school, he was mostly managing stuff on his own, but his reputation stuck around, so things didn't get any better for him socially

- part of the reason why he started wearing hoodies all the time is so that he could cover the dexcom on his arm and hide his fanny pack to give his classmates less to fuel their fires with

- when he got to aguefort, he was determined not to let anyone know he was diabetic and would slip away to bathrooms or quiet stairwells between classes to manage things

- for a really long time, all of the bad kids just thought he was a really picky eater because he would only eat food he brought from home because he knew how to dose for it properly

- die-hard insulin pen user for years because he liked the control it gave him, and he always found pumps too obtrusive to justify the convenience

- once he got into artificing, he was able to make himself a pump that he was actually happy with, which turned out to be really useful during adventuring because it took off a little bit of the mental load

- going high often makes him go into a rage, so one of his signs that he is too high is when he has to make an active effort to not go into a rage for seemingly no reason

- on that note, i think that being in a rage would burn through any glycogen stores he has very quickly, so he is almost always low when he gets out of his rage

- this is somewhat convenient when he's really high because he can lower his blood sugar decently quickly, but if he goes into a rage when he isn't high or he stays in the rage for too long, then he can be scarily low when he comes out of it

- everyone assumes that being in a rage just makes him hungry, because 9 times out of 10 he'll pull out a granola bar or packet of fruit snacks and eat it as soon as his rage ends

- the bad kids find out he's diabetic after he goes into a rage during a fight while he is already going low, and by the end of it he's so out of it that they call wilma and digby in a panic, who explain what's going on and make sure he's going to be okay

- after that, he gets a stern talking-to from his parents and all of his friends that he needs to tell the people he's spending all his time with that he has a chronic illness that is, in fact, going to have some amount of impact on his life

- once he realizes that they're only upset because they actually care about him and he scared them, he is much more willing to let them know when he's feeling bad and manage things in front of them

- it becomes a tradition for everyone to gather around gorgug after any fight and wait until he's got his blood sugar within a reasonable range before they do anything else

- the bad kids all learn how to test his blood sugar and give him insulin so that they can manage things for him if he's ever incapacitated for any reason

- they also all get his fantasy dexcom data on their crystals, so any alarm he gets is followed by a barrage of texts telling him to stop doing whatever he's doing and manage things (as annoying as he finds it sometimes, he can't help but be touched that they all care about him enough to do so)

- at first, they designate adaine as the official low snack provider because she can pull them out of her jacket, but after an incident where the party had split up, and gorgug was continuing to go low after already having eaten the snacks he had on him, they realized that they should all be carrying things (this also lets them introduce variety into their offerings so that he doesn't get sick of always eating the same low snacks)

- by junior year, the whole school knows he's diabetic because he's fully stopped hiding it, but he's also gorgug thistlespring, 3-time saviour of the world and famous rock star, so he knows that no one is going to give him shit for it (especially because it would be on sight for the rest of the bad kids if anyone tried)

- he can house a juice box in less than 3 seconds; everyone is impressed the first time they see him do it

- he's usually pretty reserved when drinking because it messes with his blood sugar, but a few times a year he'll decide that he wants to get plastered and not worry about anything, and one of the other bad kids will volunteer to manage things for him for the night

- his half-orc biology compensates somewhat for the compromised immune system, so he only gets sick slightly more often than his friends and doesn't really think anything of it, but when ragh and lydia see how often he gets sick, they're like, hey bud, what's going on here, and he realizes that his immune system is actually very compromised