A Patient Becomes a Physician
By Rosalind S. Fournier
Diagnosed with juvenile diabetes 25 years ago, Joy Atchison now cares for children with the disease.
In 1983, Joy Atchison, M.D., noticed that she was often extremely tired—not all that unusual considering she was a student about to graduate from the School of Medicine at UAB. But she became concerned because she also was constantly thirsty and losing weight. Atchison knew the symptoms were consistent with diabetes, though at 25 years old, she considered herself an unlikely candidate—at least for type 1 diabetes, then more commonly known as juvenile diabetes. A visit to the student health clinic confirmed her suspicions and surprised her, too: “It turned out that I did, in fact, have type 1 diabetes,” she says.
Atchison now had to face her residency at UAB, with its irregular and demanding work schedule, while handling an entirely new health-maintenance regimen, including insulin injections and regular monitoring of her diet and glucose levels. However, learning about diabetes as both a patient and a resident ultimately encouraged her to select pediatric endocrinology as her specialty. “When I was diagnosed, I started paying more attention to the fact that the traditional way of managing diabetes was changing,” she says. “It caught my interest.”
Today, Atchison’s practice at UAB, which includes seven pediatric endocrinologists, cares for approximately 2,000 children with diabetes and is the only comprehensive clinic of its kind in the state. She stresses that having diabetes herself does not make her any more knowledgeable, professionally, than her colleagues. Still, she says, on a practical level it does sometimes help that she has faced many of the same issues her patients do—though they don’t always realize that.
“While my having diabetes is not the first thing people know about me, it’s not a secret,” Atchison says. “So it surprises me that occasionally a patient I’ve been seeing for years doesn’t know that I have it. They assume that when I talk to them about taking insulin, it’s just in the role of a doctor, though occasionally it’s something I’ve learned from my own experience.” At the same time, Atchison realizes that because she was diagnosed at a later age, her story does not exactly mirror those of her pediatric patients. “I have to tell them, ‘Look, I’ve never been a five-year-old boy with diabetes playing Little League.’”
Atchison, who recently passed the 25th anniversary of her diagnosis, says managing diabetes has become nearly second nature. “It is demanding, but probably no more than it is for anyone else at my age who works and has a family.”
She points to the amazing progression she has witnessed in diabetes care, such as the development of insulin pumps, pager-sized devices that deliver rapid- or short-acting insulin throughout the day as needed. The advances have helped normalize the lives of diabetes patients and improve their long-term prognoses. “By now the conversation is not a matter of ‘Will my child be able to go to college?’” she continues. “It’s more like ‘Yes, and
they will be around to take over the
family business.’”