I read this so often as a kid, that the front cover curled. I was desperate for media representing disabled people. I have left spastic hemiplegia and mild hypoglycemia, neither of which are type one diabetes. I have had left spastic hemiplegia since I was born. I was diagnosed at two, as a result of being born three months premature. I'm the only one in my family.
Andie Dominick was diagnosed at nine. She had an older sister with it. This is quite possibly the only memoir I've ever read, and definitely the only one I've read about a disabled person.
Oh wait.
It's about her sister, literally from the second sentence of the book until the last. The title is misleading. If it were "Needles: A Memoir About My Sister and the Disease We Shared", I wouldn't complain. I didn't knock stars off for that, though. I knocked off stars because this was written from the point of view of one of the whiniest, arrogant, sanctimonious narrators I've had the displeasure of reading. The back of the book, the edition I read, made being disabled at a young age seem so tragic. IT'S NOT. Throughout the book, she and her sister seem to hate diabetes, and themselves for having it. They repeatedly state they would kill themselves rather than be blind, and Dominick cannot stop whining when it actually does set in, -knowing- it would happen eventually. Her words, not mine. Dominick points out a wheelchair user in the book for a sentence, but it's in a negative light. She makes another student's epilepsy all about herself. I was stunned and wondered why I'd liked this book so much as a kid.

The way this was written was odd--entire chunks of her life were cut out or glanced over, that I would have found very interesting. She wrote about -her sister's- experiences with those events, though, which I thought was frankly creepy. Goes beyond idolizing her and right into a weird zone.

I don't deny that events in her life were tragic. She finds her sister dead from a cocaine overdose, and talks about it and her grief for the whole second half of the book, which is part of why I think the title should be changed. I can't imagine that kind of horror, though. She whined everywhere else and was self-centered and self-absorbed. She spent a good twenty pages describing her wedding, and -eyeroll.- She wasn't selfish, though, even when she whined she was. This book made me determined to find a -good- memoir of growing up with juvenile diabetes, and more memoirs about disability in general. ( )

This book is exactly what it says it is which is a memoir of growing up with diabetes and is not a memoir in general of Andie Dominick's sister's life, but only where diabetes has touched it. This could have made for a very depressing and disjointed book but the writing is so spot-on - detail where you want it, brevity where an episode is necessarily included but is not interesting in itself.

It's educational too. I had thought that type 1 diabetes was a matter of insulin injections and balancing the diet. I hadn't really thought it was a tremendously serious systemic disease that needs attention throughout the day, everyday, and will impact just about every aspect of life. I hadn't thought that without constant care it could lead to major disabilities and premature death. It is to the credit of people with diabetes that they don't foist all that on us and let people happily think they are just like normal but have carry sugar cubes and stick a needle into themselves a couple of times a day.

I have a niece who was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 9. Rather than let her eat special meals, the whole family went on a diabetes-approved diet, essentially whole foods and they all took plenty of exercise and kept regular getting-up and going-to-sleep hours. You might think that this would result in them all being healthier, but no. The mother became a paranoid schizophrenic and the elder sister died of cancer, leaving a little boy who turned four the week after his mother's desk. I don't know what happened to the father... he left. But Jessamine, who is a most responsible social worker now, is in excellent health apart from the diabetes, although she never dared risk having a child.

My niece's happy story isn't everyone's experience of this dread disease and the book is a memoir not fiction so it doesn't end 'happy ever after' and it left me feeling quite bereft, lonely and hopeless.

I would recommend this book to people who like reading memoirs generally and especially if they like medical stories. No need to have any connection to diabetes to enjoy this beautifully-written book.

Read in 2009, skimmed through and reviewed in 2012. ( )

Beautifully-written, compelling look at growing up diabetic. Andie faces various medical travails: her initial diagnosis, a hemorrhaging eye, and tubal ligation (the threat of pregnancy proving too great a risk). The most heart-felt moments, however, are not health-related; rather, the death of her sister and her marriage. A somewhat casual approach to an abortion and admitted cocaine abuse (esp by the sister) may make the book unsuitable for some young readers. Otherwise, a moving tribute to familial, romantic and even self-love. ( )