Diabetes… the invisible disease

First off, I hate using the word ‘disease’, but Diabetes is an invisible disease. It’s not very often that I admit to the worries, fears & potential life threats that can hinder my day to day life when living with it. But when you hear of a fellow T1D passing away from a hypo in the middle of the night, the reality of how serious my condition is suddenly hits home.

Living with diabetes is all about balance; being your own dietitian, mathematician, scientist & personal trainer, to achieve perfect results. But, no one is perfect and the pressure to achieve faultless blood sugars can take over your life!

I personally have NEVER let my diabetes control my life, that is something my parents & doctors always told me. “You control the diabetes, the diabetes does not control you!” I am extremely proud of my achievements and experiences that I have accomplished so far, despite the fact that with every decision I make in life, my diabetes is always a factor that has to be considered.

My family & friends are my rocks, no matter where I am they always give me the motivation to keep fighting. I’ve had many off days, but my parents never let me give up annoying as it was when I was struggling through my teenager years! However, I now have a huge appreciation for all their hard work and grief they put up with as not once did I end up in hospital!
On nights out (yes diabetics can drink) my friends have checked my blood sugars and made sure I’ve eaten something.

But… for some reason, every time I tell someone new about my diabetes their immediate comments are, “That must be so hard? But I guess you control it really well? Do you have to inject and prick your finger?”. My reaction is usually, “Well I’ve had it since I was 18months old so don’t really know any different but try to control it as best as I can”… inside I’m thinking completely different! Yes, I have grown up with it all my life so I don’t know life without the disease. We might as well be best friends, me & my broken pancreas! But the continuous blood testing, injections, hypos, highs, mood swings, carb counting … it does get tiring, exhausting in fact, some days you just want to give up! Sometimes even denial strikes where your efforts & constant monitoring don’t show any difference and your blood sugar just wants to do its own thing.

Diabetes is also accompanied by every uncontrollable emotion under the sun. Anger & short temperedness can be a side effect of being Hypo or Hyper. There’s been multiple times where I’ve snapped at friends and family for no reason to find shortly after that my blood sugar was low.
Being agitated is a sign of when my blood sugars are high – this is now noticed by my close family, who will offer the suggestion that I might need to go sort my sugars out.
Often I find myself bouncing between high & low blood sugars, this is something I’ve always battled. But because my levels are not balanced I experience tiredness, lack of concentration & loss of appetite. It’s strange because this disease is with you 24/7 but the mind doesn’t clock onto why you’re feeling these emotions until you finally read your blood sugars & have a heart attack at the sight of the result!

Hypos/ Hypers are the scariest aspects of diabetes, these are the dangers and fear factors of the disease. The constant monitoring & injecting are primarily to avoid becoming hypo or hyper. Throughout school, college & uni a constant anxiety for me was getting a hypo during a lesson/ lecture. The worst part was drawing attention to myself while the teacher/ lecturer was talking by getting my blood meter out & gulping down a sugary drink as if it were a drinking game! Hypos can be extremely dangerous because you can go into a coma if not treated quickly & correctly.

Hypers aren’t so bad in my eyes as they are not instantly life threatening but if not corrected they can lead to a diabetic coma as well. For this reason, as a bad habit I used to run my blood sugars higher than recommended to avoid the chance of going low. There are then huge diabetic complications that can follow continuous high blood sugars, like Diabetic Retinopathy (which can lead to loss of sight), amputation of limbs, Heart Disease, Kidney Failure…

After my last eye appointment (in 2018) it was discovered that I had the beginnings of Diabetic Retinopathy! This was a wake up call of the seriousness of diabetes and the importance of looking after it! I contacted my diabetes consultant immediately who reassured me this was normal for diabetics who have had the disease for a long time (22 years at the time for me). This made me feel a little relieved but since then I have been monitoring my blood sugars closely & really trying to make an improvement. Luckily my hard work did show in my last HBA1C reading with it being the lowest since 2014! (Still on the higher side BUT a huge improvement) …

So this is my life it might seem simple and under control on the outside, but every day is a struggle in achieving the perfect result. Some days I literally hold on by a thread other days I can be on cloud nine but I continue with the aim of improving for a better & healthy life…