Something to shout about
Cliona
I've had Type 1 diabetes for just over a year. I was diagnosed on the 7th December 2007, the day after I'd taken a piano exam. As I had a lot of exams I thought that all the symptoms were just caused by the stress of revising as I can get quite worried and stressed really easily.
I felt awful after lunch at school so they called my mum and she came to pick me up. She took me to the doctors surgery and we were seen.
A & Eat!
The doctor told my mum to take me to the hospital and were told to go through the accident and emergency entrance. When we got there the receptionist was so busy eating her sandwich and chatting to her colleage, that my mum had to practically scream at her, "My daughter is on the floor and all you care about is your sandwich!"
A nurse and doctor heard this and came out. They asked what was going on and all they said was that, as the doctor who had seen us said, she would phone the hospital to tell them that we were on our way there.
The doctors and nurses started to stabilise me at 3:15pm and they finally managed to stabilise my blood sugar level at 6:15pm. I was given my own room in the hospital ward as I was much worse than the other patients that had been admitted with diabetes.
I stayed in hospital for the next three days. When I went home I was still really weak so before I was diagnosed, a walk that would have lasted around twenty minutes was taking about forty minutes to complete.
Fitting back in
I went back to school for the last day of the Christmas term and surprised the rest of my tutor group even though all my teachers knew I was coming back. I was scared to be going back although my parents and teachers helped and supported me all the way throught and I'm going to prove something to everyone who knows me and that is having diabetes doesn't ruin your life and it's about you controlling your diabetes not the other way around.
Many people keep the fact that they have diabetes a secret. I didn't. Everyone in my year knows that I have it and although I get some snide remarks about it, that's life and anyway they don't understand.
Many people haven't even heard about diabetes even though every single person knows someone who has diabetes, even if that person doesn't know it themselves. I think that people need to be made more aware about what diabetes is and what people with diabetes have to do and what they have to cope with. If we help more people understand what diabetes is then maybe people who have diabetes will find it easier to talk about what it is and how they cope with it. Well it worked for me.
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