My diagnosis came as a shock
I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2005, when I was 34. It was a bit of a bolt out of the blue. I was in the Royal Navy at the time and had to have a routine medical because I was changing my house insurance. I had no symptoms, so it was quite lucky really that I found out then.
There was a lot of ignorance on my part. I’d heard of type 2 diabetes, but I didn’t really know what it was. I know so much more about it now. At the time, I thought it was associated with obesity and bad diet and so on. That was a preconceived idea I had then, which I think follows through to what a lot of people think about the condition today.
I didn’t really think, ‘why me?’ I was told it was just one of those things.