I often find myself wondering what my life would look like if I had been born into different circumstances.
Not in another country. Not in another time.
Just another family. Another reality.
Would I still be here?
It's a strange question to ask yourself at seventeen, but it's one I haven't really been able to shake ever since I started pondering it.
Over the past few years, hospitals have become a familiar part of my life. I've spent countless hours in waiting rooms, listening to names being called out, and overhearing fragments of conversations that were never meant for me.
Somewhere along the way, I started noticing that not everyone sitting in those waiting rooms was worried about the same thing.
Some people were worried about the diagnosis. Others were worried about what came after it. Something, that unlike the diagnosis, had no solution.
The bill.
The prescription.
The next appointment.
How they were going to make it all work.
I remember wondering: how is that even fair?
How can the difference between getting the care you need and going without it come down to money? How can a medicine someone depends on every day become something they have to think twice before buying? How can survival become another expense to calculate?
And perhaps the question that stayed with me the longest was the simplest one:
Why them and not me?
Because the truth is that I was lucky.
I was lucky enough to have access to the care I needed. Lucky enough to focus on managing my condition instead of worrying whether treatment would be available to me in the first place.
But luck shouldn't determine who gets access to healthcare. It shouldn't determine who gets treatment, who gets support, or who gets a future.
Yet for millions of people around the world, it does.
That realisation stayed with me long after I left the hospital. Long after the appointments ended. Long after the conversations faded into memory.
Because once you've seen that reality, you cannot really unsee or unknow it.
Eventually, you stop asking yourself what the problem is and start asking a different question:
What can I do about it?
Project DiAware is my answer to that question.
I'm not saying that I think one initiative can solve everything, or that awareness alone changes lives. But what I am saying is that every meaningful change starts when someone decides that a problem is no longer acceptable.
To me, this has never been just about T1D, but also about dignity and access.
It's about ensuring that nobody has to wonder whether they'll be able to afford the care they need tomorrow.
There is still a long, long way to go. Nevertheless, every conversation, every partnership, every session, every person who learns something new brings us one step closer.
I firmly believe that healthcare and survival should never be privileges, and I hope you do too. If this resonates with you, I'd love for you to become a part of this movement.
Sometimes, change begins with something as simple as a conversation, a shared post, or a story passed on to someone else. A single act could help us propagate awareness through a ripple effect, extending our impact to people and places we could never have reached on our own.
This is DiAware.
Turning awareness into action,
Gurman Kaur Dhillon
Founder, Project DiAware