D-Blog Week: What Brings Me Down & What Keeps Me Up

Today, the theme for Diabetes Blog Week posts is 'what brings me down'.  Talking about the moments, days and, for some, weeks when diabetes is making you want to scream, cry or hide away is really important.

During the majority of my teenage years, I went through a lot of times when I would completely ignore my diabetes and never talk about it.  There would be many meals eaten which I wouldn't give any insulin for and my body would be flooded with ketones.  There were whole days when I wouldn't test my blood sugars at all.  At one point, my HbA1c hit 12%.  I wasn't in contact with anyone else with type 1 diabetes, and I attempted to deal with that by pretending that I didn't have it either.

Things only began to change when I started blogging 3 years ago and I attended a DAFNE course.  I finally felt like I was surrounded by others who understood exactly what I was going through.  Most of the time nowadays, the reasons why I'm irritated by diabetes are because I'm putting all my effort into looking after myself, and sometimes what I see on my glucose meter doesn't reflect that.  For me, however, this is a better result than the exhaustion and illness I suffered when I paid no attention to my diabetes at all.  At least now, when I'm feeling down about it, it shows that I care about my health.

There are numerous aspects of diabetes that get to me, for example like when I'm covered in bruises from injections, or my blood sugars seem to make no sense at all.  There will probably always be times when diabetes will try to get the better of me but, when it does, I know where to come.  So thank you to the Diabetes Online Community - you have been crucial to my physical and mental health.  Because of you guys, I know that whatever aspect of diabetes is bringing me down, I'm not alone. 

:)

Day 30: Challenge Met!

So guys'n'gals, it's Day 30 and the final post of HAWMC.  I know I didn't post every day, but I still worked hard to make sure I produced all of the posts by April 30th, so I'm going to say that I pretty much met the challenge. 

The last prompt was to produce a word cloud on Wordle, buttt I couldn't get Java to work on my laptop so I drew one.  It's quite literally a diabetes word cloud...

Day 10: Dear Baby Daisy

Dear Baby Daisy,

Your life's barely even begun.  You have so much ahead of you - so many things that will mould and shape you.

In 3 years time you will be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.  It won't bother you too much to begin with - mum and dad take care of every aspect of it.  Most of all you'll miss 10p Freddo chocolate bars, but it's okay because a good few years later they won't interest you at all because Cadbury's chocolate gives you tooth ache and they cost a whopping 25p.  That's inflation for you, little one.

Dr. Johnson's going to upset you.  He's a nice bloke but he'll squeeze your little fingers so hard to try and get blood out of them that they'll throb for ages afterwards.  Years later, when he's retired and you can no longer remember what he looks like, you'll picture his face as the Kentucky Fried Chicken man.

When mum and dad split up, remember that it's for the best.  You'll come to realise that, as much as you love them both, you would never want them to get back together.  After being separated for 14 years, you'll have been lucky enough to have spent 4 Christmases together and have been on holiday to Switzerland, just the 3 of you.  You'll be more of a family than you ever might have been had they stayed together.  Most importantly though, you'll have two of the best friends you could have ever wished for.

Ye of little faith, remember that you are capable of so much.  Don't leave your GCSE and A Level exams almost in tears because you think you've messed them up - trust me, you really haven't. 

Appreciate those you love and who love you.  Make the most of the time you have with good friends and wonderful family - some of them won't be around for as long as you will hope.

In the 6 years you spend at primary school, do not waste a single second of them wishing you were older.  When you look back at your class photos and you remember the names of every single one of your peers, you'll wonder where the time went and be baffled at just how much things can change.  Losing Alice will hit you hard, but you'll remember her beauty and how she was always an angel, even here on Earth.  The same goes for when you're older; don't dwell on wishing you could go back because you can't - move forward confidently and keep going.

As for your diabetes; don't neglect it.  You may feel like you're invincible sometimes but you're not.  Don't blind yourself with ignorance, thinking that you're immune to the complications of diabetes and so you can treat it as you like.  You're only human, Daisy.  Remember your hypo treatments, your prescriptions and most of all take your insulin!  When your blood sugars are running so high that you can hardly drag yourself out of bed, or you're in A+E with DKA, you'll kick yourself for being so stupid. 

Last of all, don't run up a £240 phone bill ringing your friends' mobile phones from the landline when you're 14.  Mum will make you pay it back to her in full and rightly so.  You won't be happy when you have no pocket money for months on end.  Not only that but your mother will bring it up in front of people to embarrass you for years to come, so just don't bother.

Walk with your head held high and with a smile on your face.  You have so much to look forward to - believe me, I know...

From 19 Year Old You.