What it’s like being Type One Diabetic

My meds

Life is like a box of chocolates. Not so good for diabetics.

Now, word of warning. I will be first-world-problemising a lot in this article. Diabetes is a bitch, but it’s not a life-wrecker the same way some conditions are. In terms of sheer, annoying inconvenience however, I’d say it takes the top spot fairly easily.

Since that weak Forrest Gump reference was the best opener to this article I could think of, I may as well copy the film and start from the beginning. I was diagnosed with Type One diabetes when I was 14. I still remember the colour of the paint on the walls of the NHS hospital I was in – a kind of weird lime green. I was staring at them absent mindedly as a nurse talked me through, in twenty minutes, how I was going to live the rest of my life.

“…Now the really important thing, Jamie, is that you keep your blood sugars between four and eight.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Depends for how long. You’ll go blind, you’ll go mad, your internal organs will fail, you’ll need lower-body amputations, and then you’ll die.” So yeah. No biggie, really.

With these uplifting words ringing in my ears, I went about my life as a diabetic. The next few weeks were a pretty steep learning curve. (Did you know, for example, that if you inject yourself with a micro-fine needle too fast it can break off in your skin? I certainly didn’t, until slightly too late.) But the most important things I learned were two new words- Hyperglycemia, and hypoglycemia. Hyperglycemia happens when your body doesn’t have enough insulin to turn blood sugar into energy, so it just sits in your veins and chokes them until you can sweat some of it out. To get an idea of how this feels, try to imagine your blood crystallising inside you. You learn new types of tired, new types of thirsty, new types of weak, as these tiny crystals multiply like maggots in a corpse to clog your insides. Hypoglycemia, by contrast, is when your blood sugar goes too low, until you eat something to bring it up to normal levels again. For an idea of how this feels, imagine a kind of sickly weakness, crawling up your legs, like a zombie virus infecting you from the feet up. Except rather than eating brains, the zombie you turn into just feels confused and bleary, kind of like a hangover except without the enjoyable bits.

More meds. For reference, a non-diabetic would not have a reading above 8

To deal with these fun little friends, I carry around insulin at all times to inject myself with. I’m lucky, in that I don’t have a problem with needles. I’m less lucky in that certain people around me do. There is literally no way of taking insulin that doesn’t look vaguely suspicious. I should know – I’ve tried most of them. When I was first diagnosed, I decided to do my best not to look like a junkie by taking my insulin furtively – under tables, hiding in corners, even locking myself in toilet cubicles – before realising that that was precisely what a junkie would do. Switching tactics, I decided to do it openly, confidently – after all, if I acted like nothing was wrong, maybe people would take a hint from that. That worked pretty well. That is until I almost got thrown off a bus when someone sitting next to me started having a panic attack at the sight of me injecting myself. Nowadays, I tend to try and offset any negative reactions by warning people before I inject. Because let me tell you – there is no better opening line to use with a group of relative strangers than- “Hey guys, do any of you have a problem with blood or needles? Because if so, I suggest you look away now.”

No transpotting references please

Practicalities aside, I think one of the least-looked at aspects of diabetes is its mental and emotional effects. When suffering either low or high blood sugars, it’s impossible to relax, and even harder to think straight. Like seriously, if Breaking Bad had been about diabetes rather than cancer, it would have ended in Episode One with Walter White poisoning himself by accident because he forgot what he was doing halfway through a hypoglycemic attack. Because I don’t run any drugs cartels, I have slightly different

issues – forgetting what I’m doing, or whom I’m talking to, or what we’re talking about. I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of friends I haven’t had to apologise to after my sugar-addled brain caused me to say something stupid. Once I even started crying after breaking a plate when my blood sugars were high. (For reference, I was eighteen at the time, and over six foot. I think I’ll live it down in a couple of decades.)

But – contrary to all appearances – I’m not writing this article purely to bitch. The best description of type one diabetes that I’ve ever heard was that it was “troublesome, but not tragic.” And things could certainly be worse. Despite problems, my blood sugar control is generally good, so I won’t be developing any side effects (the going blind, going mad, losing your legs, feet and internal organs bits), any time soon. And after almost five years, It’s become pretty apparent that a life with type one diabetes can still be…well, a life. And besides, one of the best moments of my existence has spawned from my diabetes. I’d just gone off on one at a fellow student (I’m not going to say precisely what I called him, but it rhymed with funt. Cucking funt, to be precise.) He looked at me, rolled his eyes and said:

“Well, you’re polite.”

I looked back at him, and responded:

“I’m diabetic. I don’t sugar-coat anything.”

And I’m not sure why, but I felt like an absolute fucking badass.