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This is one of the contributions to:DIABETES ESSAY AND POEM COMPETITION 2009
Diabetes to one person it could mean everything. Their whole life is based around it, to another it could mean nothing. They might not have ever heard of it before and mightn’t ever hear of it again.
I was six years old whenever I was diagnosed with diabetes; it quite literally turned my world upside down.
I was at home whenever the symptoms aroused, tiredness, thirst, always going to the toilet. But it was my Granny who finally said I should be checked out, I was being completely abnormal. I wasn’t myself at all, and I most definitely wasn’t a normal six year old girl.
When I went to see my General Practitioner they took a blood reading, they couldn’t find the pen so they had to use an ordinary needle. I thought they were never going to stop, as if they were digging for gold. I could feel the warm blood trickling down my finger as they caught it on the test strip. The loud bleep on the machine was the turning point; they didn’t even explain what was happening. We were just told to go home and pack an overnight bag because they were referring me to the hospital. I was only six; it was a scary ordeal for me. One I will never forget, I can only remember seeing needles and drips everywhere I looked. My Mum is a trauma co-ordinator in the Ulster hospital so she knew quite a bit about diabetes. So it wasn’t as if I was completely on my own but I didn’t understand, words like carbohydrate and insulin didn’t mean anything to me. I had to be taught everything, and gradually things seemed almost normal again. But my dreams of becoming a performer where shattered.
The training required just wasn’t feasible and if I take a hypo on stage there’s nothing I can do. Being a teenager now it’s only becoming clear, I quit my singing group and my dancing but I kept drama on. It means too much and I’m not prepared to let diabetes take everything away from me. When I do my injections people can stare and point, when my blood sugars go low I need help, when I test my sugars people can stare and ask questions but it doesn’t change anything. Diabetes doesn’t affect me as a person, it doesn’t change who I am.
I’ll always be a girl with diabetes, I’ll always have to do sugars and injections and I’ll always feel the same about that.
Having diabetes doesn’t slow me down, it affects what I eat and what exercise I do and that’s about it. I’m still just a person.
I didn’t tell my friends about it when I went into first form in school, I didn’t even think about it. There was a girl in my class from primary school and she knew but nobody else did. Looking back now I realise that I shouldn’t have been so careless, none of my teachers knew and one day walking through the corridors my knees went really weak. I started shaking and my vision went quite blurry, my friends had to half carry me into the toilets and lean me against the sinks. They didn’t know what to do, my friend from primary school had to test my sugars and run to the school matron. It was an experience I shouldn’t have had, but it was one that really opened my eyes. I realised that diabetes is dangerous; I didn’t feel my hypo coming on because I’d just had games and I’d been exercising. I hadn’t done my sugars that morning and as a result I hadn’t known what amount of insulin to take. I’d just guessed, from that day on I’ve spent more time researching and trying to get in contact with other people my age with diabetes. I hadn’t realised that uncontrolled or badly controlled diabetes can lead to heart failure, kidney and liver failure, strokes, amputations and loss of feeling in limbs and going blind.
I scared myself in that respect and I remember sitting in my room reading a girl’s story about how she lost her sight but still recorded a CD and I cried my eyes out. I’m aware now about just how much of an impact diabetes has had on my life and on others lives as well, there’s so much that people don’t know.
Trying to adjust to life with diabetes was difficult for me, it still is! I can only hope that my diabetes won’t affect my life in any major ways. There are jobs and so on that diabetics aren’t allowed to do by law, which in my opinion is discrimination. Being a diabetic has made such an impact on my life in good and bad light but in all honesty I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s who I am now and forever, and being diabetic only makes me different in medical aspects not as a person.
I’ve been to diabetic camps and to different charity walks etc. and I’ve seen people who are so determined to get on with their life that they ignore their diabetes completely. But I’m not going to waste my life away like that, there’s so much that the world has to offer and diabetes isn’t going to stop me grabbing what I can with both hands.