It's Sunday.

You're lying on a hospital bed, attached to various pumps, drips and monitors as you have been for the last few days. There are things beeping and lights flashing constantly depriving you of sleep, the one thing you need most at the moment. That's how it has been for almost a week now, but tonight, tonight is different. Lying in bed still, in your own room of the hospital, mum by your side. This is the night you're going to get some sleep; you have to, otherwise you think you will go crazy. Still attached to all of your monitors, you pull the wires as you twist and turn trying to get comfortable. The family have visited a few times, and brought in items to try and make you feel at home. But you don't. You can't.

Lying on your side, your mum's stroking her fingers down your back to comfort you. She knows you don't feel great, she always has done. Motherly instinct she calls it. But even she cannot detect how you really feel. She asks if you're okay. You nod and fake a smile. As she leans over you, you turn to face her. She tells you, you don't have to always be brave, you don't always have to wear a smile, it's okay to show pain. You try not to cry. She smiles at you and sees you welling up and starts to herself.

"Don't worry" she says, "Let it all out. Crying only helps you feel better" You don't want to cry. You know there is sense in her words but you still don't want to appear hurt. The corner of your eye is warming up, and a trickle of pain rolls down your face. This tear, is the worst kind of tear. Soon you're both crying.

* * *

It started on the previous Saturday, the pains. Stomach cramp and a headache. You had gone out with your friends but came home because you didn't feel so good.

You started throwing up that evening. Nothing would stay down.

You're diabetic.

This is your downfall.

You generally have good control, normal blood glucose levels, nothing out of the ordinary. This bug that you seem to have contracted has messed all of this up. Glucose levels that should be between four and nine are suddenly in the forties, and little poisons called ketones have appeared at alarming levels in your bloodstream. In a panic, mum rings up the diabetic section of the local children's hospital. They tell her to bring you into A&E. The next thing you know, you're in a taxi on the way to the hospital. After you arrive you get called in by the nurse who does the usual routine; blood pressure, blood glucose test, pulse.

After the wait whilst watching the sign saying the waiting time for a doctor is four hours, you finally get called in. This only leads to another four hour wait, in which doctors come in and out constantly checking injection sites for abnormalities and asking seemingly personal questions concerning bowel movements. Once this is over, the nurse comes in with the verdict. The doctors have prescribed two drips; one containing insulin, the other one with saline and potassium. Once you've waited another hour, you are lead up to the high dependency unit, surrounded by babies who don't stop crying. Your not sure but it must be at least nine o'clock by now. All you want to do is sleep. * * * Sleep. All you want to do is sleep. There's one thing stopping you from achieving it, the babies. By now the nurses are doing half hourly blood tests. They don't bother you, just the babies. They don't stop crying. It might be alright in a normal size ward, but this one is compact, with three other beds in there with you. The toddler in the opposite corner wont stop screaming "no!" which only wakes the other babies up and makes them cry. You feel like screaming. This only gets worse after three days. The fourth day; the promise of being moved onto ward seven, the adolescent ward, are fulfilled. Finally, a room to yourself, no babies, no main light being switched off a seven o'clock, a bit of freedom, at last. This is more relaxed; your own TV, you've been taken off your drip and can go places without having to pull a metal pole around. This is so much better. Glucose levels are still running high. The doctor looking after you has decided to inject seventy units, when the average injection is only six. Everyone seems nervous, even the nurse has gone a light shade of beige. Half an hour has passed and nothing has happened. The doctor prescribes another eighty units. By now you are falling asleep.

It's two o'clock. You are woken up by the nurse telling you that you are having a hypo and offering you glucose tablets and toast. You eat them and fall asleep again.

The next morning they put you back on the drip. Later on you are told you will be put back on high dependency.

Usual day.

That evening it's Sunday. You're lying on a hospital bed, attached to various pumps, drips and monitors. That is the evening you shed the worst kind of tear.

* * *

I'm now sitting on my bed in the high dependency unit with nurses discussing my 'case' at the foot of my bed. And I'm hypo. They can't think what has caused this. Neither can I.

My friends often tell me I'm lucky to be diabetic, I get to eat in lessons; I tend to eat a lot of sweets due to hypos. They haven't got a clue what it's really like. For example, a stomach bug for them means a week off school and some antibiotics, for me, it's a week in hospital on a drip.

My fingers hurt

My hands ache

I really hate this.