I consider my life more a life- with diabetes than a Diabetics life. To provide some background into this illusive experience I will begin with the basics. I play polo; the kind with horses, the fast, dangerous and adrenaline pumping sport that rules my life. I live and breathe my horses. I am to tackle my Gold Duke of Edinburgh's award in just a few months, walking 80km and camping for three nights. I have successfully taken all my GCSE's and AS Levels and survived a truly horrifying (but successful) interview at Cambridge University. I have managed to master the control of a car without accident or injury. And lest I forget the slightly less unique challenge of negotiating the hormone infested, party filled, sex driven, social minefield which is apparently unavoidable for a seventeen year old girl.

Oh! Did I, yet again, fail to mention the ALEVELS which one must also endure to successfully complete this part of 'life'?

>From the above mentioned 'my life' I might loosely describe myself as not being afraid of a challenge, not being scared easily; you may have made that assumption too, but I'll let you in on a secret; there is one thing that I am truly terrified of. This 'thing' haunts the back of my mind constantly, blackens any cake I eat, or chocolate bar that may pass my lips, it multiplies the weight of guilt on my shoulder for any missed blood tests or jabs done slightly later than they should have been. Like a recurring nightmare every four to six months this is a place where shadows flicker over the whitewash walls and screams can be heard from the corridors (please understand this is my interpretation). This is the 'Adult Diabetic Clinic'.

Pause, for dramatic effect.

Life was so much brighter in Paediatrics. I'd wait there where the walls were quite literally full of smiling faces, circus scenes and zoo animals. The tables scattered with bold pictures to colour in and little kid's playing with the dolls and toys in the corner. At fifteen I considered everything so naff, but now I stare at brass plaques reminding me of those who died in the war, or those that just died full stop and left beds to the hospital. Desperate to be distracted I grasp for a magazine laid out on a tiny table, a Woman's Weekly perhaps from 2002. As knots tie themselves up in my stomach I can literally feel the hormones racing around my body, pushing up my blood sugar levels.

But alas, being obviously old enough to have achieved everything else in my life so far, I no longer need to be told everything will be okay. Instead I look into the eyes of someone who has never had a hypo, never had to factor five injections into his day and they tell me how badly I'm doing. Out come my HbA1c results and I feel my life being hijacked by this 'chronic long term illness'. Little do they seem to realise my body is fighting against me, like a war any strategically planned attack on my blood sugar levels is craftily dodged by those little molecules of glucose joy riding through my veins. As I watch many an overweight old person being wheeled into the waiting area, blind in one eye and missing a few toes, I long for some sort of atom bomb to give my body no choice other than to do as I tell it.

But the logical, sensible girl in me says they must realise this. I am not trying to fight against them. They see thousands of people living with Diabetes every year; surely someone has let them in on the secret. So I make a resolution, a peaceful one. I will have to trust. I will endeavour to write out my strategically sequenced battle plan, and as instructed record the result of every battle won, and lost. And hopefully, when they see this, I might gain some allies and this place won't seem quite so scary.