When Phyllisa Deroze was told she had diabetes in a Fayetteville, North Carolina, emergency department years ago, she was handed pamphlets with information on two types of the disease. One had pictures of children on it, she recalled, while the other had pictures of seniors.
Deroze, a 31-year-old English professor at the time, was confused about which images were meant to depict her. Initially, she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, as shown on the pamphlet with older adults. It would be eight years before she learned she had a different form of diabetes — one that didn’t fit neatly on either pamphlet.
