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This is one of the contributions to:DIABETES ESSAY AND POEM COMPETITION 2009
Do you ever feel like you could die at any moment if you forget to do something very simple? Do you ever feel like you always get the short straw at things in life? Do you ever get sick and tied of having to do something that you don’t want to everyday of your life?
My name is Stacey and I have had diabetes since the 31st of October 2005. Years have gone by and I try and live my life as normal as possible. If you were to see me, you would say I’m just a normal teenager living a normal life.
Yes the 31st of October 2005 changed my life forever. Like every other kid that has been through this will say the same thing about the symptoms they got. I was feeling weird and not my normal self. I had an interschool carnival and I was representing my school in shot put and discus. When I tried to throw the shot put, I couldn’t get it as far as I normally did. I still won both my events but I was really tied by the end, where normally at the end of an eventful day I would be fine. Well I didn’t think anything of it and just went on with my daily routine.
Things started changing fast and because I was young I didn’t know what was wrong. I was taking a 1.5 litre bottle of water to school and filling it up at least twice to three times a day. I thought I was being healthy because of all the water I was drinking, but what went in must come out and that’s when I kept going to the toilet a lot. As usual mothers know best and I was booked into my doctors the next day. I was told to fast from midnight till I was seen by my doctor. I remember the last thing I ate before I was diagnosed and that was, apple and berry crumble that I made myself. I went to the doctors and they took a blood test and then sent me home to have breakfast. I then came back for another blood test to see if I had a rise in my blood sugars. After my bloods were taken the nurse asked if I have had my blood sugar level taken. The news wasn’t good because you could see it on her face. The words rang in my ear, ‘I think you have diabetes’. I didn’t really know what it was, I didn’t understand.
That afternoon I was admitted into Princess Margaret Hospital or PMH for short. I was seen by the doctors there and they explained that I had juvenile type one diabetes. My mum said if there was a chance I had type two. The doctor said there was basically no chance with the blood results I had. I was in hospital for about a week, learning about diabetes and how I could live a normal life except for the blood sugars four times a day and then the insulin injections, and you can’t forget the change in diet, where as a kid you couldn’t have fairy floss ever again.
About 3 weeks after being discharged from hospital, I wasn’t feeling the best because I was having a low. My mum said to have a shower and see how I felt after. She didn’t realise that I needed sugar to get my blood sugars up. I came out of the shower with my face white like I have seen a ghost. I tested my blood sugars and they were really low. I sat down on the coach and my dad got me some jelly beans. The next thing I know I was waking up to the sound of an ambulance officer saying my name. The headache was terrible. I had my first diabetic seizure.
I’m one of the lucky ones because I was asked to be apart of a research study and that meant I got to have an insulin pump. The research was that I went into hospital for the day and they would have insulin going through on a dip in one arm and have bloods taken every five minutes from my other arm. I had to do this once every six months for18 months. It did take a while longer then most because they always had trouble finding a vein. On my last study they tried twelve times to get a vein. They finally found one and everything was going fine, they got me down to under 4.0 and they were satisfied with the data they received. They started to bring my blood sugars back up and I was around 7.0 BSL, when I had a seizure. They didn’t understand because my blood sugars were fine. The doctors gave me a CT scan and they couldn’t see anything wrong. I spent the night in hospital and they sent me home the next day with an appointment to have an Electroencephalography (EEG). I went to the appointment and had my EEG done, they didn’t know the results, so I had to wait to be seen by a neurologist a couple weeks later. I went back to PMH to see the neurologist with my mum. We weren’t expecting there to be anything wrong with my EEG. My mum thought I was just tied from the softball tournament I played the week before and that’s why I had my seizure. Of course there was something wrong because I always draw the short straws. They said I had Juvenile Myclonic Epilepsy; it is a mild sort of epilepsy which is one of the best one to have if you were to have epilepsy.
I’ve been living with diabetes for almost four years now. I am thankful that I have a pump with makes it easier with the amount of sport I play. I love my sport, but the main sport I play is softball. I have played softball for about 8 years now and have represented Western Australia in seven national championships played all over Australia. Two of the tournaments I played were for School sport WA, which is a tournament played by secondary school students from all different schools all over Australia. Last year was my last time playing with the school sport WA because I finished school that year. Every year the coaches and officials select an Australian School team from the way we played during the week. Last year I played in Sydney and it was the best tournament I had played until then. I was selected in the Australian school team. I was so excited because it was a big honour. I had to go back to Sydney to play against two USA teams, and indigenous and the under 23’s women’s Australian team. We had to play three games a day for four days and then we had the finals on the fifth day. After the rounds our team was second on the ladder and we were in the grand final vsing the Australian under 23’s team. The score was 1- 4 in our favour. We won the tournament for the third time in a row. I have never won a championship before, I felt so good and such a relief. We were announced as the under 23’s international champions.
Over the last seven months, I have played in another tournament, which was the under 19’s team. We played in Melbourne and came third after rounds, but we didn’t make the finals so we ended up in fourth place. I finished my secondary schooling and was looking forward to working and getting paid for it.
On the 26th of February I was diagnosed with Diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. On the 25th, which was the Wednesday, I was feeling a bit sick for some reason. I did a line change that day and felt fine until dinner time. I woke up around three in the morning and spewed up. I was thinking I just had a bug and went back to bed. I woke up again at about seven and spewed up again. I told my mum that I was sick and stayed in bed. I knew I had to get up because I needed to test my BSL and have something to eat. I got up out of bed and then I had to run to the toilet again. I tested my BSL and it was really high, around 25 mmol. I gave myself a correction but I couldn’t eat anything because I was too sick. I couldn’t keep anything down and that meant my epilepsy tablets as well. I have never felt this sick before, and I don’t thing it was anything I ate. I was sitting on the couch with my spew bucket; “chucky” and I was sipping water, but it was no use because it wasn’t staying. Every time I got up to go somewhere my heart was beating faster then normal. What was wrong with me? My mum kept ringing up and seeing how I was but I never was any better and I just kept getting worth. My mum said she will be home from work at 4.30pm and she will take me to the doctors. I dragged myself from my bed and had a shower. I was so weak that I could hardly put my clothes on and luckily my sister came home and helped dress me. My face was so pale and my mum took one look at me and we headed for the hospital emergency room at Joondalup health campus. We saw the triage nurse and she put me straight through to the emergency room. The doctor saw me and put me onto a saline and insulin drips to try and get my blood sugars under control and get the ketones out of my body. I was put into the resuscitation room for most of the night, so I could have a nurse with me the whole time. Then I was move in the early hours of the morning to the Nurse Special ward so I could recover. Everyone has a thing called there bi-carbs I there blood and normally they are around 22 and when I came into hospital I was just over 1. I spent the next day in hospital and I was allowed out of hospital on Saturday afternoon. The doctors said I was lucky I came in when I did otherwise I would have died.
Every day goes past and every day you hope that there will be a cure for this disease. Its quite unfair really, that know one in my family has diabetes and then also there’s know one that has epilepsy as well. I would love to just be normal again and be able to just eat things without worrying about doing my blood sugars or giving myself insulin. I guess I am lucky in a way because there are a lot more kids out there in the world that have much worst of a disease then I do. Like the kids in Africa that have HIV because they don’t have the necessary medical supplies to treat them. The one good thing is that my diabetes and my epilepsy doesn’t interfere with my sport much. I try and live my life to the max and sometimes I don’t what to worry about my diabetes, but I have to. I have to stay healthy because my softball means so much to me and my teams needs me as well. That is why I fight everyday I fight for being with my family and playing the sport I love. To every kid out there with diabetes, don’t give up and know matter how hard it gets, it will always get better because your family and friends are there to support you every step of the way.