My experiences with retinopathy
The trouble with being diagnosed with diabetes as a kid is that all kids generally believe they’re immortal. I heard some of the scary stories around what can happen if blood sugars are out of the healthy target range. It all sounded like problems for older me to worry about. Then one day you are older, and you want a time machine so you could go back 30 years and give yourself a good talking to.
That being said, I have been quite fortunate in terms of my experiences with diabetes related complications. I’ve had background retinopathy since around 2016, but my optician always used to say he couldn’t tell I’d lived with diabetes for so long based on the condition of my retinas…and I was proud of that. Then a couple of years ago, I was informed that it has progressed to diabetic maculopathy – a condition whereby my macula (part of your eye which provides us with our central vision) was damaged. Suddenly I was dealing with twice-yearly diabetic eye screenings and the possibility of losing my sight because of this.
"Luckily, this was around the time I went on my carb counting course and started using my insulin pump – a few months ago I found out I have improvement in the condition of my macula and I now just have background retinopathy which is being monitored at my diabetic eye screenings. I cried with relief."