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This is one of the contributions to:DIABETES ESSAY AND POEM COMPETITION 2009
Why do you bring that bottle of water to school everyday?
’Cos I’m thirsty alright?
Two litres thirsty?
Water’s good for you.
Freak.
Shove off Bryan.
This was a common conversation in the months leading up to Easter and my 15th birthday. I became so tired of it. The sniggers and whispers. The teachers yelling at me to stop drinking in class and not letting me go to the bathroom. My inability to explain my uncontrollable need for water. The rumours I was anorexic. Missing the bus in the mornings because I was too tired to get out of bed. Nobody including myself had any inkling there might be something wrong.
I go to a music school in Aberdeen and I board there during the week, travelling back and forth home to Fife at weekends. Except for during March, when preparations for the Big Concert mean rehearsals every weekend, late nights fitting in practice and homework, and generally a bit of a hectic lifestyle.
At fourteen last year, I thought it was because of this busy schedule that I was so tired all the time, falling asleep in classes and music practice rooms, missing the bus from the boarding house to the school building having been unable to get out of bed. I managed to explain away all the symptoms and signs that might have shown there was something wrong; my need for water was passed off by the fact that I had just had braces taken off and had to wear plastic retainers all day – I thought they were making me dry mouthed – an absurd thought in hindsight; losing weight – I symptom I was very happy about – was put down to me finally seeming to be losing my ‘puppy fat;’ needing to go to the toilet – obviously this was because I was drinking so much water.
If anyone said I looked a bit ill and asked if I was okay I told them I was perfectly fine and reeled off my excuses for my odd behaviour.
I think my mum had some strange maternal sense that something wasn’t quite right but as I never saw her and on the phone I vehemently insisted I was quite alright, she let it be. Instead we talked about plans for the Easter holidays – our trip to London, staying in a hotel, going to see Billy Elliot in theatre and the trip to the Tutankhamen exhibition, already pre-paid for. The shopping and the train journey and the restaurants we discussed at length and with much enthusiasm. And we weren’t even on to the second week of the holidays yet: a whole week skiing in the French Alps, the wonderful food, the late nights and good times, the thrill of speeding down the slopes – my perfect holiday.
The Big Concert came and went, one week before the end of term. My parents alarmed faces and exclamations at how different I looked when they saw me afterwards were soothed by my rationalization that it was just the dark make-up and different hairstyle I had for the occasion.
However by the end of that last week even I was beginning to think that something maybe was not quite right. My mum came to pick me up that Thursday and I slept the whole way back in the car. On Friday I got up for a couple of hours, made some soup and tried to read a book, but of course I fell asleep again. By this time mum was seriously worried, looking up online diagnosing sites and suspecting thyroid problems and a whole array of other possibilities. On the Saturday she called in her friend who is a nurse. She came round, and with one look advised mum to speed me off to A & E.
That’s how I found myself in intensive care that night, full of tubes and surrounded by beeps and friendly, apologetic nurses stabbing my finger every half hour to check my blood sugar. To tell the truth I think at the time I was more upset about missing the trip to London on Monday then about the consequences of diabetes! The next day was Easter Sunday. No chocolate for me of course. No food at all. The day was spent in general monotony on the outside but inside I was thinking hard; that’s when the fact that I really had diabetes finally hit home. My thoughts were often punctuated by various doctors, nurses and dieticians all pouring a flood of information onto me and then disappearing off elsewhere. Thank goodness my mum was there to absorb it all – I definitely wouldn’t have managed without her. I remember thinking, “this is crazy, my whole life has just been disrupted and re-jigged – shouldn’t this affect these people too?” I can remember many strange thoughts like these as the world revolved around me that day.
So life went on. I was discharged a few days later, and taught how to manage my medicine for the time being, though my blood levels were still hovering around 20. I was allowed to go skiing which was quite amazing considering that a week before I was on the verge of collapse! After that, school and just getting used to everything. Again, it seemed as though I had gone through some cataclysmic change while everyone else continued as normal. Of course now, almost a year later I have a very different outlook…
I know there are thousands of other people my age with diabetes but I’ve never met anyone else with it, so sometimes it’s easy to feel that ‘diabetic’ is just a label placed on me, especially when I’m away from my home and parents. At first I kept thinking, “why me? What have I done to deserve this?” But I soon realised that this was a selfish, whining attitude and now I see that in the grand scheme of things, my diabetes is so small it seems laughable that I should ever have let it get to me. There are much worse things out in the world to worry about. I’m going to rise to the challenge, keep my head up and do the best I can. So that’s my story, probably one of a thousand others just like it, and yet still individual. ‘Cos I’m just a teenage diabetic, but I’m also Fiona Cuthill who plays cello and hates mushrooms, who has blue eyes and freckles and whose favourite colour is purple. I’m me, and so is my diabetes.