June 22, 2011 – The Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington — The first time Sonia Sotomayor was tested for diabetes, a lab technician sat her down in a big chair and assured her the needle in his hand would not hurt her. “I kept watching this big needle coming to my arm, and I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh, it’s going to hurt.’ ”
The 7-year-old Sotomayor hopped off the chair and ran out of the hospital, hiding under a parked car, the hospital staff in pursuit. When they finally dragged her out to draw blood, “I was screaming so much I didn’t feel the needle,” she said, to knowing chuckles from the audience.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday spoke publicly in detail for the first time about her childhood struggles with the debilitating disease, talking to a gathering of about 150 diabetic children and their families. Few Supreme Court justices, who live and work mostly in seclusion compared with other Washington officeholders, have spoken so candidly about their personal struggles.
At the panel, which was part of the Children’s Congress of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the youths listened to the story of her diagnosis, which she insisted was “not that different from yours.”
First, she noticed she was thirsty all the time. Then she began wetting her bed. “I was ashamed,” she said. One Sunday morning, Sotomayor fainted at church and was rushed to the hospital.
There, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It was the first time, she recalls, she saw her mother cry. “I thought to myself … well, if it isn’t so bad, why is my mommy crying? And I was a little scared.”
Nearly 50 years later, doctors still don’t know the exact cause of the disease, which renders the pancreas unable to produce insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar.
But Sotomayor assured the children, some as young as 5, that their options were limitless. “You get to do anything you want in life, because I have,” she assured them, adding that she has the job of her dreams, “a really cool job.”
