To begin with, I didn't think I would find it that hard to talk about my life and living with diabetes, however, when I began writing this, I suddenly found it quite hard to express how I really felt. Up until now, I have never given much serious thought about how diabetes has actually affected and influenced my life and the lives of others around me. It is almost as if I don't really want to admit that I have something 'wrong' with me. In my opinion, of all the things you could have wrong with you, diabetes is a more fortunate thing to have. I prefer to call diabetes a 'thing' as I do not feel that it is an illness, nor is it a disability. Illness is associated with feeling unwell and at this moment in time I feel perfectly healthy. Disability is a term often used to refer to a condition which can lead to physical, sensory, cognitive and intellectual impairment - and luckily, at this stage in my life I do not suffer from any of these. Diabetes is just a 'thing' which is a part of my life, I truly believe that "diabetes lives with me, and not me with it".

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes nine years ago at the age of ten. I remember feeling pretty ill, tired and seriously thirsty for a long time before I was actually hospitalised. But even then I didn't think there was anything seriously wrong with me. Nobody in my family had ever been seriously ill, nor admitted to hospital - so it came as a huge shock to me and especially to my parents when I was diagnosed with diabetes. Looking back now, the signs were obvious - especially when it got to the stage where I couldn't eat as I did not have enough saliva in my mouth to swallow. I had also lost a lot of weight and would rather have gone to sleep than played with my friends outside. It was all a bit of a blur at the time - I remember asking some consultant guy "does that mean I've got 'it' " and crying my eyes out when he confirmed that in fact I did have diabetes, even though at that moment in time, I had no idea what diabetes even was. Everything happened very quickly, and before I knew it I was out of hospital, armed with syringes, a test meter and strips, insulin and advice booklets, ready to start the next stage of my life. To begin with, I remember at night, crying myself to sleep a few times. I was quite overwhelmed - not that long before I had been a normal ten year old, and now I had to inject myself and test my blood sugar. Nevertheless, this was just an initial reaction, after all a lot had changed in my life. However, nowadays I do not regret the fact that I have diabetes, in fact I believe it has made me a stronger, more organised and self sufficient person.

I remember my first ever insulin injection well, a nurse in the hospital did it. She stuck it in my arm and it hurt like hell! I remember vowing to myself to never let anyone else do that to me again. From that day on I have always done all my injections myself. Injections are no big deal to me, I'd much rather inject myself than test my blood sugar level, because that actually hurts! I carry my insulin pens around with me everywhere; I have now become quite efficient at injecting myself discretely and quickly in virtually any situation. Occasionally I even find myself in the unfortunate situation when I cannot remember if I have even done it, as it is now a subconscious process. I don't hide the fact I have to inject myself after meals wherever I am, however I don't make it obvious what I am doing. It was once suggested to me that I should go and inject myself in the toilet - I was completely appalled by the idea that I should hide myself away each time I have to do an injection - which could be up to five times a day. In my opinion, injecting in a public toilet is associated which connotations of the dealing and injecting of drugs. I may be a 'drug' user, but why should I be banished to a smelly toilet to administer a drug which keeps me alive?

I cannot stand people who blame diabetes for ruining their lives, to be honest I feel very sorry for individuals who have such negative outlooks on life. Having diabetes has not restricted me in any way and as far as I am concerned, never will. I may only be nineteen, but I feel I have achieved and experienced a lot in my life. I have always had great respect and admiration for Sir Steve Redgrave - a fellow type 1 diabetic. In my opinion, he is the perfect example that diabetes should never hold you back - after all, he was the best in the world at his chosen sport - a 5 time Olympic gold medallist, and you can't get any better than that. I have always been a keen sportswoman and was a competitive swimmer for fourteen years before leaving for university. I have always been competitive and hard working; I am not someone who settles for second best. I trained for many long hours in the pool, often completing up to 9 training sessions a week. Training was hard - but as the saying goes 'success doesn't come easily'. My diabetes never really affected my training; my coach was aware of my diabetes and kept a look out for me encase I started behaving a bit oddly. However, in all my years of swimming training I never experienced a serious hypo whilst in the water. Occasionally though, I did have to literally crawl out of the pool in order to eat a handful of dextrose sweets, to overcome a hypo, and then sit around for a few minutes waiting for them to take effect, before jumping back in the pool to carry on training. It even became a joke amongst the swimmers in my squad; in order to escape a extremely hard set they would claim to be feeling a 'bit weird' and needed to get out to find some emergency food!

I am proud of my achievements in swimming, having competed at National level many times and the 2005 Commonwealth Games Trials. I am the type of person who performs well under pressure. However, during important events, I would often get extremely nervous. I couldn't eat and often found that my blood sugar levels would refuse to go below 25.0 mmol/L, despite having pumped myself full of insulin in a desperate bid to lower my blood glucose before my race. I asked many doctors why this was happening and never got a definite answer. I now play water polo competitively at university and find that the same thing happens before big matches! I was always given good advice by the team at my diabetes clinic, but often felt they didn't quite understand the intensive training that competitive swimmers have to put themselves through. All the advice I was given, applied only to young people taking part in recreational sport once a week. There must be many other young competitive athletes, like myself, who found themselves in the same situation. My one big regret is that I never came across another diabetic competitive swimmer like myself. It would have been very useful to find someone in my situation and to have asked them how they coped with training and competition. I expect the reason for this is that on the outside we are like everyone else, nobody would be able to tell that we have diabetes, so therefore unless you actually saw someone testing their blood sugar levels or injecting on poolside, you would never know.

I am well aware that my diabetes has had an impact on the lives of my family and friends. Only recently, I was filling out a form which asked for the exact date I was diagnosed with diabetes. I could remember that it was roughly sometime in September 1998, but wasn't sure of the exact date - so I phoned my mum. Without hesitation, she told me that it was on the 2nd September 1998, in the evening! She obviously could remember it that easily, as it must have been a significant event in her life.

Diabetes has never prevented me making new friends or meeting new people. As far as the majority of them are concerned I am just another normal nineteen year old. I am currently in my first year of university and am living away from home for the first time. This has been a completely new experience for me and has been a steep learning curve. I think that my parents were quite worried about me being away to begin with, their main concerns being that I would have a hypo in the night and no one would realise, or that I would have a hypo when out clubbing and it being misinterpreted as me being drunk. Luckily, neither of these things have happened yet - however, it is always something that is in the back of my mind. My one main fear whilst at university is that I will have a serious hypo at night and no one will find me until someone notices me missing in lectures. My flatmates all know I am a diabetic - however, they are not normally in a sober enough state to realise I might need help.

Being a diabetic is not something that comes up in conversation very often. I don't tend to tell anyone unless I have too. I am not ashamed of being a diabetic, bt on the other hand, I don't like telling people that I have to inject myself five times a day - it is something that makes me different from them, and often attracts unwanted attention from people who want to stare when I inject myself and make disgusted faces. I am not saying that I get this reaction every time, in fact, it happens quite rarely, but when it does it makes me feel very different and not normal.

There are also many misconceptions in regards to diabetes - especially the difference between type 1 and type 2. I have often been told, by ignorant people, that obviously, the reason I have diabetes is because I either used to be really overweight or that I ate too many sweets and chocolate when I was younger! I think that it would be very beneficial that people of all ages, especially adolescents at school, at educated about diabetes. Quite a lot of the people I have told about my diabetes admitted that they didn't even know what it was!

I am a very optimistic person. I don't believe that diabetes will ever have a negative impact on my life, nor will it ever prevent me from achieving my goals. I look forward to the day that a cure for diabetes is discovered - but until that day I will carry on with my positive attitude. Like I said at the beginning of this essay, "diabetes lives with me and not me with it".