She Went on “Jeopardy!” and Brought the T1D Community With Her

What do diabetes and Jeopardy! have in common? Whether you’re navigating the daily demands of type 1 diabetes or standing beneath the bright studio lights, people see the moment—but rarely the journey it took to get there.

Few people understand that better than Kaylea Bowers, a recent Jeopardy! contestant living with type 1 diabetes. For her, the path to the iconic podium is inseparable from her diabetes journey. And while Jeopardy!  is all about having the right answers, no amount of trivia studying could have prepared her for the diagnosis that changed her life.

*Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity

The road to diagnosis

I was diagnosed July 15, 2000. I was almost 11 years old. We were on a family vacation visiting relatives in Syracuse. Looking back, there are these funny little details I still remember. We got KFC on the drive up, and that’s the last time I ever ate KFC because I got so sick afterward. After a few days, my parents were honestly getting frustrated with me. I feel so bad for them now because they had no idea what was happening. There was no family history of type 1, and they thought I was refusing to eat or acting out. Every time I tried to eat, I’d throw up. I was supposed to go to the movies with my little sister and my aunt, and before we left, my parents handed me an apple and said, ‘If you don’t eat this before you get back, you’re grounded.’ I remember thinking, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ My throat felt like it was closing up—I physically couldn’t eat. We went to see Chicken Run, and just walking from the parking lot to the theater, I had to stop every few steps because I was so exhausted and struggling to breathe. During the movie, I threw up and even peed my pants. That’s when my aunt realized something was seriously wrong. She rushed me back to my grandparents’ house, and they took me straight to the hospital. I still remember the triage nurse taking one look at me, smelling my breath, and saying, ‘Your breath smells fruity.’ That was the clue. My blood sugar was 425. It wasn’t as high as some people experience, but I was already in diabetic ketoacidosis with cerebral edema. If we’d waited much longer, I probably wouldn’t have survived. I spent a week in the hospital, including a few days in the ICU. Just when I was ready to go home, I developed kidney stones—which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Then I was sent home on the old-school routine of R and NPH insulin, mixing the insulins myself, eating at exactly the same times every day and counting carb exchanges. It all feels so foreign compared to diabetes care today. In short, we went on vacation and came home with diabetes.

The learning curve

My mom and dad were the ones absorbing all the information. I was 10. I didn’t really know what was happening to me. Someone had bought me a Game Boy, so I was just happy playing Pokémon. But I do distinctly remember my parents sitting in my hospital room with an orange and a syringe, practicing injections. Pens weren’t a thing back then, and I was too scared to inject myself, so they gave me all my shots until I was probably 13. We left with a lot of information—maybe even too much. It was overwhelming.

Relative risk

Two of my three siblings also have type 1. My sister was diagnosed first. We’re nine years apart, and she was about the same age I was—around 11. She was feeling sick, going to the bathroom a lot, sleeping all the time, and my parents recognized the signs right away. They took her to the hospital, and that was her diagnosis. I don’t remember if she was in DKA or just on the edge of it, but she spent a couple of days in the hospital. Then my younger brother, who’s 11 and a half years younger than me, was diagnosed at 16. We thought, ‘Well, my sister and I were both diagnosed around 11, so he’s probably in the clear.’ But my mom noticed he was drinking tons of Gatorade and sleeping all the time. She checked his blood sugar, and sure enough, he had type 1 too. I was upset when my sister was diagnosed, but I was especially angry when it happened to my brother. I just kept thinking, ‘Why? Why is this happening?’ Our other sister never developed type 1, and at this point, I think she’s in the clear. But raising three kids with type 1? All the credit in the world goes to my parents. Now that I’m an adult—and a parent myself—I have so much respect for anyone who has to navigate a child’s diagnosis. Over the years, so many people have said, ‘Your family should be studied.’ We’ve been asked if we’ve done genetic studies or if researchers have looked into us, but we never did. It’s definitely unusual. These days, though, we have a group chat called “Sugar Siblings,” and I love that.

Final(ly) Jeopardy! 

I grew up watching Jeopardy! I’ve always been a trivia person. I was a pretty geeky kid. I loved school, loved studying and wasn’t really into sports. The first time I auditioned for Jeopardy! I was almost 12, not long after my diabetes diagnosis. They were holding auditions for the kids tournament, so my mom took me to a hotel in downtown Atlanta. Back then, there wasn’t anything online—you took a written test, and if you did well, you took another one. If you passed that, you played a mock game. I had so much fun. From that day on, I remember thinking, ‘I’ve really got to work on my buzzer skills.’ Ironically, that’s probably what hurt me on the actual show years later. I took a break during high school and college, then started auditioning again as an adult. Twice I made it all the way to the mock game and into the contestant pool, where you can stay for two years. Both times, I never got the call. Then, this last time, I kept telling my husband I wanted to give it one more shot because I just love the show. One Friday, I was at work with my best friend. We don’t usually work in the office on Fridays, but we both wanted a quiet place to get things done. She finally said, ‘Just go take the test right now.’ So I did. And funny enough, one of the online test questions was about diabetes. It asked about the two main types, and I remember thinking, ‘Okay…that’s a good sign. I know this one.’

“My pancreas is my phone.”

The Jeopardy! contestant team was amazing. Even beyond the diabetes piece, they were just such lovely, supportive people. I told them, ‘Hey, I loop with my Omnipod and my Dexcom, so my pancreas is my phone. I know we’re supposed to put our phones away, but is there anything I can do?’ And we worked it out. They had someone from the contestant team sit in the front row during the game and hold my phone for me while I competed. I told her, ‘If it starts going off, it will be a very loud alarm. That means something is wrong enough that I need to pause the game.’ And they were completely on board. They said, ‘Do what you need to do. Your health comes first. If anything happens, we’ll pause the game for as long as you need and then keep going.’ Thankfully, it ended up being totally fine. That was my biggest fear. I’m also in the choir at Disney and perform at Epcot during the holidays, and that’s always my big question: I’m on a stage—what happens if I go low? But they’re always really accommodating, so it was a similar situation. I knew I could get through a 45-minute Christmas show. I could get through 30 minutes of Jeopardy! I should be fine. And then, of course, the stress of the day sent my blood sugar up to about 250 anyway, so I didn’t even have to worry about going low.

Visible victory

Honestly, I feel like I went through a few stages of grief after filming. At first, it was, ‘Okay, I got third place. I didn’t do as well as I wanted to.’ I was really hard on myself. But as the air date got closer, I started thinking, ‘People don’t just get to go on this show.’ I’ve spent 25 years proving myself capable. No one is going to watch me lose and think I’m stupid. I certainly don’t think that when I watch the show, so why would I think that about myself? I was proud, and I was a little nervous. Most people don’t love seeing themselves on camera or hearing their own voice, but I was actually pleasantly surprised. I thought, ‘Wait, this is really cool.’ The high production value probably helped, but I was just fully, fully proud. I was also so happy that I could represent this community because it’s something I’m really passionate about. I intentionally wear my diabetes tech on my arms now—not just because it’s my favorite place to wear it, but because it’s visible. I want it to spark conversations. A lot of people aren’t familiar with it or comfortable with it, and I love being able to normalize it. Plus, if you spot another person with diabetes out in the wild, you’re immediately bonded. It’s just awesome. The comments from people in type 1 groups really meant a lot to me, especially the parents. Now that I’m a mom, anything involving kids hits differently. So many people said things like, ‘My daughter saw you and I pointed out your tech, and she smiled. It was so good to see someone like her on TV.’ That was the part that meant the most. Knowing I could show kids who might feel different, isolated or unsure about their future that they can do amazing things. You can be on a TV show. You can wear your tech. You can live a happy, healthy, successful life. Little Kaylea never wanted diabetes, but now I can look back and say, ‘Look how much we’ve learned. Look how much we’ve grown. Look how much healthier we are.’ And that’s a pretty incredible thing.

Kaylea’s story is a reminder that diabetes doesn’t define what’s possible. Whether you’re living with type 1 diabetes or searching for representation and support, you don’t have to do it alone. Join our online community for resources and to connect with others living with diabetes.