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This is one of the contributions to:DIABETES ESSAY AND POEM COMPETITION 2009
All journeys start somewhere and there are many in our lifetime. Paths that arise will meander and weave and we can never be sure how the scene will be set.
Looking back over my relatively short life, I can vividly remember the gruelling five days I spent in hospital just before my eleventh birthday last year.
It had been creeping up on me for some time. Diabetes. In the silent evenings of January, there it was. I had felt lethargic for several days but thought nothing of it, nor had Mummy or Daddy. It was lurking within me, curled up like a sleeping animal. Flu had come and gone fairly recently, but the symptoms were not vanishing and I was loosing both strength and weight. There was worry, intense worry deep down, but I convinced myself that there was nothing to fear. Morning came on a Saturday and the sun streamed through the curtains and seemed so alive. But I did not. Daddy phoned the hospital and I could sense urgency and trepidation in his voice, but I wished away my anxieties. I cannot remember the car journey to town and after the first blood test all I can recall were the Doctor’s words. They seemed austere and immediately I pictured a crossroads; this was a turning point. He simply said that I was Diabetic and that I must be taken to the intensive care unit in the local Hospital.
It was all happening very quickly. I staggered through the bare corridors with my parents and felt as if I was leaving normality in my wake. Through the coloured curtains the sunlight had faded and clouds hovered curiously above us. I did not know it at the time, but I was about to embark upon an arcane quest for knowledge about something that only a few hours earlier had meant very little to me.
Alarm did not arrive initially, but hid in the corner of my mind, waiting to pounce in a moment of weakness. The Hospital was new to me and in this scenario felt rather unwelcoming. After a series of hallways strewn with uplifting posters, we appeared in the intensive care unit. I saw a number of children in bad conditions, and I was not as humbled as I might have been if I had felt perfectly alright, but as it was, I had no clue of my condition. We waited in the reception for only a matter of minutes as Daddy spoke to various people whilst Mummy kept an eye on me with her hand on my shoulder. We anxiously met up with a nurse who weighed and measured me with a variety of different tools and instruments. The nurse decided to place me in a wheelchair, although it had not occurred to me that I had become too frail to walk. The first of many beds that I would encounter on my long experience of time in Hospital was a small one in a private room, where I had drips attached within both my arms. I had to be brave. Both my parents followed the nurses to the bed where I would stay for what I thought would be only a day. The bed by the window. They held hands on the bedside as my strength deteriorated and I fell into a dreamless sleep. The view outside was bleak.
After hours and hours of deep sleep, Mummy and Daddy had been cruelly spilt by hospital rules and took it in turns to be the ‘one visitor’. Night Nurse Bella took care of me throughout the darkness and made my family and I feel secure. A blood collection was taken late in the night whilst the city slept.
Morning came and a jolly atmosphere was about me, and I knew why; I was alive and there was no longer any danger. After an anthology of information was thrown at me, I was wheel-chaired to another ward, where less ill children could stay when they had been treated, and I was moved to another bed by the window. I could see the pale blue sky.
Learning about diabetes was the next task.
I met two diabetes nurses, both with different views and opinions. The alarm pounced at this moment, when both my parents and I were told that it would be dangerous if I had low blood sugar (a hypo) and didn’t treat it. They wouldn’t tell us what ‘dangerous’ actually meant. My imagination made it much worse. Hope felt shattered. I later found out that under no circumstances can you die from a hypo and there is nothing to worry about. Also, if you have one late at night you will simply sleep through it, albeit wake up feeling exhausted.
I talked to a dietician who really lifted my spirits and told me that there were many things that I could eat, and that my fears of loosing some foods that I enjoy were absurd. Some people seem to think (especially children) that having diabetes forces you to stay away from sweets and chocolate. The odd one or two from time to time is perfectly fine; timing is everything.
When you have diabetes it takes some time to adjust and recover. After five nights in hospital I returned home and after a further three days I was back to school. At School, diabetes hindered progress in some areas, but most people understood that.
I found that at first fear takes over and you can discover that you are taking the days a step at a time and not looking forward. I felt unable to keep to my usual routine due to the anguish and the steep learning curve that comes with the condition.
In the violet twilight of March I bottled up the angst and the anger and carried on with things as best I could, although I was furious at the in-justice of being different. I believed that the holidays would put a rest to most of the torn emotions that hung around me. Mummy revealed that she was upset about the fact that, as a family, we had this condition for life. Together, we worked hard to accept and understand the diagnosis of diabetes. Then the world turned around and I saw the light of day and the sun rose again. We found that the worry slipped off our shoulders when I did my first injection. To be honest, you become free because you can live with diabetes without relying on anybody else.
Now, after a year to learn, mature and develop, we have finally reached a stage where the severity of the condition no longer seems to be there. I just know that we have to control the condition tightly. In a year, due to very strict control, I have only had no serious hypos, and only three that were scary. I do blood tests on a regular basis (at meal times and before bed) and three injections.
At first, injections hurt and were uncomfortable, but over time I have felt them less and less. Once every three months I go to ‘clinic’ to see my doctor and get the results for my ‘HBA1C’ test. This test is done by collecting 6 drops of blood from my finger and sending it to hospital. The people in the laboratory study the vial and look at my red blood corpuscles (as they only last twelve weeks) and see how the diabetes is being managed. School friends don’t bat an eyelid anymore, which doesn’t really bother me although it would be nice if some people could acknowledge it by simply asking once in a while if I was ok.
Diabetes does not prevent me from doing anything that I really want to do. I just have to be careful with some sports like Swimming or ‘cross-country running'. From time to time I feel constricted, and slightly irritated that I cannot participate in these sporting activities.
For me, happiness and medical security has been assured as I have learned with the help of my family that keeping my blood sugar levels under tight control makes diabetes really easy to live with.
For me there have been monumental advantages. I have flourished and eaten healthily, and before I had this condition I used to be cold and sometimes ill but this has stopped and I feel much stronger. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But, on a slightly lighter note, if a cure is found in the distant future, I’m there! In the meantime however, this is my journey.