The Worst Day Of My Life

21st of December 2017 18:04 is a date and time I will always remember. This is the worst day of my life so far.

So this all started Monday the 18th of December at 23:35 when I got a phone call from my mum telling me to come to my granny’s, now my granny has been very ill for a while now and she was unable to leave her bed after Monday morning so we knew she was going down hill. My mum had called to say “the doctor has been out to see your granny and has said that she does not have long left, come over and see her and maybe say good bye, she may not make it to the morning”. Of course I went straight over.

When I got there she was asleep in her bed, medicated and, what seemed to be, in not too much pain.

The rest of my family came over and we all sat there saying good bye just in case she didn’t make it through the night. At 4 am I left my granny’s and came home, there was not much left for me to do and the rest of the family were leaving too, only my mum and two aunties stayed (these are my granny’s daughters).

She made it through the night.

Between Tuesday and Thursday night my granny didn’t seem to make any move worse or better, she just seemed to stay where she was, I thought this was a good sign.

I was wrong.

Unfortunately some point about 18:00 my granny passed, My granddad (her husband) had just said good bye for the night and left to go home with my mum. My auntie was on the phone ordering Chinese food, I was at home, the rest of the family were going about their day and my sister was in with my granny.

The next part is what I was told by my sister and this is her account of what happened.

My granny was appeared uncomfortable and agitated one moment and the next her whole body just relaxed. she shouted to my auntie to come through quickly, when she came into the room she said “she is fine, she stops breathing for a few seconds then she is fine” at this point my granny exhales for the last time and both my auntie and sister heard the “death rattle”. At this point they checked and confirmed that she was gone.

This is when everyone was phoned to come over immediately. Living the closest I was first to arrive, I didn’t believe them when they told me, how could this be possible, she cant be dead. I checked her for a pulse but could not find one……….. I froze in place. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breath. I don’t know how much time passed whilst I stood there, looking at her before the rest of the family arrived, could of been a second, could of been an eternity, it was all the same.

We all got to go in and see her and say good bye. I was first, she was warm, which is not something I expected. I have always been closer to my granny that anyone else, which is what made this so much harder to deal with, I took her hand and broke down. I have never cried so much in my entire life, I didn’t know what else to do, I don’t think I could of done anything else.

Everyone had their time with her, got to say their good byes and then we phoned the doctors to come out and pronounce her officially dead. The doctor did that and then the funeral home came and collected her. I will always remember my granddad, a man who always knew what to do, he just stood there watching, not knowing what to do, what to say or where to go. for the first time in his life he as lost.

That was it, she was gone, we were left in the house, one by one everyone left, no one really knowing what to do now.

Margret Gribben, a woman loved by all will be greatly missed. R.I.P Granny, we all loved you and we always will love and remember you.

I miss you already.

Diagnosis

Do you ever hold someone in your arms, hear them breathing against your chest, you’re in one emotional place their in another and you have absolutely no idea what they are thinking?

I call that a normal day, to others this may happen at one point and to others this is an alien concept that they will never experience.

Previously I wrote about the first steps I have taken to seek help on how I have been feeling for a long time, and after my appointment on Friday I have been diagnosed with depression. I always thought it would be like a test, or a few appointments speaking to someone however it took one doctor 20 minutes to diagnose and he only had to ask about a dozen questions. He has offered me a few different options for managing this diagnosis:

• Therapy / Counselling – This would be the preferred option, sit down with a professional and talk things over in a room, meaning I can maybe fight this thing and not be dragged down by it, however in the Highlands of Scotland this has a 18 month wait list that the doctor is concerned about me waiting on with no other care in place.
• Drop in Chat – This is similar to the previous option however it is with a random community volunteer, not a trained professional, this person could be any one from the street asked to come in and sit so you have a physical person to chat to, they can offer no advice or guidance, so essentially its very similar to what I am doing now, writing down my thoughts to get them out of my head.
• online Therapy / Self Help – This is where you go online and read about how going outside and enjoying nature can help you feel better, try something new, live life to its fullest, and read how others have been helped by climbing a mountain. I have done this before (the reading it bit not the climbing a mountain) and I do enjoy mountain biking and do try to do that as much as possible, however it is not always as simple and grabbing the bike and going out.
• Medication – The final and supposedly best option, medication. I have seen some people have slight depression and be put on medication and become a zombie, emotionless, cold and entirely checked out mentally. I do not want this for me, however with my only other two options being 18 months of no help or talking to some random person who cant actually help, I have been left with no other option.

I have had a phone call from my doctor whilst typing the last part of this, he said he would call today to speak to me. When I was given the options above I asked if I could think about it over the weekend so I could read up on the medication he wanted to prescribe me. I have done some research online, both on the site he advised me to read it on (www.patient.co.uk) and other online sources, and as it turns out this is one of the safer medications when you look at the side effects.

Anyway he has called, asked what I want to do and he is now prescribing me the medication, it will automatically be sent to my local pharmacy and be waiting to be picked up as of Wednesday. He said that if things get tough for me over the next few weeks I can call up and request a sick note, he says I have a valid reason to have one and he would have no issues writing me up a sick note.

I know the next four weeks are going to be difficult on this new medication as I know one of the side effects of this medication is making the feeling of depression worse for 2-4 weeks, after that 4-6 weeks I should begin to feel better. Its just that initial 2-4 weeks that I am worried about. If I cant manage there is the very real possibility that I could loose my job.

I am one half of a two man team, the issue is the other half of my team has a proper terminal illness and due to this is often either working from home (no big issue as we work in different offices so as long as she is working its fine) or signed off work for weeks at a time, so if I need to be signed off then my team is unmanned. If she is off then I can cover her work as its my old job (Cyber Security Reporting Manager), however if I am off then she is not fully trained on my job (Cyber Security Compliance Manager) . Its not that my job is difficult or there is a lot of work to do, its just the lack of time she is available to train. A lot of people say that this is not my issue and that I should leave that issue up to my manager as its his job, however I take great pride in my work and I do not want all my effort to go to waste because someone is covering for me and doing a half effort job of it. Yes the process documents are there and I wrote them, as I did the ones for my old job that she is now covering and she says that she can easily follow them but she still messes up the reports regardless of how many times I go over the process and where she is going wrong. I just don’t know how she will do if i have to be singed off, or god forbid I ever decide to move on to another job role where she cant bother me every 5 minutes.

Anyway I start the new medication in two days, I am both excited and terrified, but only way to move is onward and upward. I’ve actually been feeling slightly better since Friday, maybe this is a good thing 🙂

 

First Steps

Wow its been a long time since I sat down in-front of my laptop to write. about 18 months in fact. A lot has happened since I last wrote on here; but where to begin….

I have now been married for almost two years, My wife, Kimberley, is still as beautiful as the day we met, and each day with her is amazing. My dog Lollie is still a nuisance and I love her more than words could explain. I am still in my first home that I bought with Kimberley, its nice but we are thinking of moving down south soon which would be nice, a change of scenery.

My job is still with the same company however I have been moved up he ranking a bit since and I do still enjoy my job somewhat, however there is very little to do which leaves me most of the 37.5 hours a week i work to sit and watch videos on the internet, read up on interesting topics and think… a lot.

It was mental health awareness week this week in the UK and my office like hundreds of others sent out a plethora of emails to support this. and it got me thinking, wondering and then reading on line about mental heath… my own mental health, and i suppose this is a good way to move onto the titled subject.

I cant remember the last time I felt good, happy and at peace within myself. Yes being married, buying my first home, getting my puppy, going out with friends; these are all good times, amazing times and some of the best I have or ever will experience, however there is a difference between enjoyment and happiness. I often get grumpy, pull back into myself and snap at those close to me for no reason, or at least not one that I can think of. I often will sit contently at my PC and work away, or watch TV or even be out on my bike and will just feel a deep sadness, that engulfs me, its like someone has dragged me into a deep dark hole, a void where nothing can get free, where pleasure and happiness disappears. This is how it has been for me for as long as I can remember.

I have never thought this was a condition, I just thought that everyone was like this, that the human default was to be sad, feeling alone and not interested in anything. I have lost count of the amount of times I have phoned into work ill because it has been too hard t get out of bed, not because i was lazy that day but because the weight of tat day was too heavy to lift and get out of bed. Other days I get myself up by telling myself “Just make it into the shower, from there you only need to get dressed and then make it into work” this way life does not seem so overwhelming, its broken up into manageable chunks, but this does not always help.

but after this week of reading up on mental health I have made the first step to getting help, I have phoned the doctor for a mental health checkup. I have stepped outside my comfort space and actually made an effort to speak to someone about all of this.  Now the above is a very brief outline of how this thing makes me feel, this is too big to put down at one sitting, I fear if I speak too much of this it will take me over and I may never come out of the darkness, as I have struggled to do this so many times before.

So on Friday the 24th of May at 10 am I will have my appointment to sit and speak to someone for the first time ever about all of this, maybe someone can help if I open up, or maybe this will all be for nothing, only time will tell and only hopes and prayers are getting me to that date. I hope the darkness does not find me before that time…. I hope I make it 🙂

Work

I am always told by my manager that “If i focused more on work I could run the company” somehow I feel this is an exaggeration, but I do appreciate the comment.

Everyday I hear the same things from the same people “have you done that yet” “are you coming on this conference call” or the best “I need a favor, I know your busy but you are the only one who can do this“. Firstly NO I’m not the only one who can do that, and secondly let me just take a step back and explain my job.

I work for an IT company, big company with around 200,000 employees working across 40 different country’s. yea its easy to get lost here. I have a nice desk job, and a title that makes me sound important when in reality I’m nothing special. My manager is one of those people who is nice one minute and ripping into you the next, he is also very nice to your face but you can tell he is only being nice because is is paid to be.

Day-to-day I open, read and respond to hundreds of emails, deal with major IT outages for a pretty big bank (no I don’t work for the bank, the company I work for works for the bank) and try not to be caught browsing websites during quiet periods. Yea I know there is a lot more to my job but no one needs to be bored by the in depth details of my job.

Now I don’t know if its my job or something else but I often find my attention focused on non work related things (yes I’m doing this during my work time). I do try to focus on my job but its just not a exciting as it once was. Everyone likes a challenge in their job, something for them to get their teeth into, but in my job its all kinda the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job, I’m very good at my job and I feel like this may be the issue. The miseducation of our gifted children study was written by a Boston University professor (it is definitely worth reading) states that children who are smart are often the lower achieving students. By this definition I’m either a genius or too stupid to be bad at my job and let me tell you I am not a genius, if it were not for google most of my blogs would be nothing but nonsense.

Anyway back to the point at hand, do you ever think if your job is right for you or do you just do it because it pays your bills? If you didn’t have bills what would you be doing right now? Me, I’d be out riding my bike, playing with my puppy and spending as much time as I can with my wife. Sadly here I am, stuck in a stuffy office, working with people I don’t like for a wage that is not too great just so I can afford to come back in tomorrow.

“You work to live, not live to work”. I wish that was true.

Path of Life

Life, day-to-day existence is something we all deal with everyday, however every one has a different day regardless of how similar our days may seem. there are roughly 1.7 billion people on this planet, and each day everyone of these people has a different day.

At one point or another we have all thought about just dropping life as we know it and running just to see what we would find, new friends, new adventures, danger, all this and much more. I have a friend who always says to me “if I didn’t have a girlfriend i would move to New Zealand”. Just like that drop life and move to the other side of the planet, now yes he does have some relations out there, family and friends, but its still a risk he is wanting to take. This always makes me think could I?

Could I, that is a great question, could I pick up a handful of belongings, throw them into a bag and just start a new life somewhere else on this planet? is there somewhere on this (roughly) 24,900 mile (40,070 KM) round planet that I could be happy?

Now this is not to say I am not happy just now, far from it, I have a beautiful home, a loving wife and a dog whom I love more that anything. I am a happy and frankly very lucky man to have the life I do, but it never stops me wondering. Colossus of Rhodes, Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Lighthouse of Alexandria, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Statue of Zeus at Olympia and Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are all the seven wonders of the world and I have never seen any of them, yes I have see pictures but I have never experienced them, felt them, explored them.

Well in short Yes I COULD just leave and go explore, but would I? Would I leave my family, friends and life behind to go explore this planet? no. I love where I am in life and if that means I may never experience this great expanse of a planet we all call home then that’s fine. I do admire people who explore other country’s and other ways of life, not a gap year student who thinks taking pictures in Africa makes them look more cultured, you sir just look like a prick in my opinion, again not jealous, just a personal opinion on these people. If your out there to broaden your horizon and maybe do some good then hell yea go for it, run and never look back, but for the other 90% of us, life is good at home and we will leave the exploring to you.

It’s Not Always Good News

So to kick this off I’m getting married in a few weeks. Sounds like a time to celebrate does it not? Well to me yes it is, however to my family its not looking that way.

I have been engaged for three years and with us finally getting our house on the 12th of July (four days time from when this is being typed up) I finally decided to tell my family that I’m getting married on August 17th. Short time I know but I would expect a “well done” or “congratulations” or something along those lines, however  no.

I do understand this is a short notice and I do understand that maybe not everyone would be happy to try and get sorted to attend a wedding in five weeks however to be told out right that no one can attend is a very upsetting thing to hear.

I know I may have brought this upon myself by leaving this until now to tell my family about the wedding however to have my father tell me “oh my god what are you doing?” and “you know the foreign legion is still an option” is not quite what I wanted to hear. I have phoned the whole family and the rest of them are happy and seem like they can make it and will be over the moon to attend. I know having told them this yesterday I have another few days to a week or so of listening to everyone’s opinion however its my life, my happiness and my mistake to make if it should ever go badly.

On another point, as noted above I am finally a home owner for the first time and I have placed myself on the first step of the property ladder. I am also getting a puppy on the same day I am getting the house. I am over the moon with regards to moving into my house, getting a puppy and getting married however my mum and sister have issues with the short time frame and my dad thinks its a joke or laughing matter.

After the onslaught from family regarding the wedding I am very hesitant to inform they regarding the puppy but at some point I do have to let them know and I know its going to be another few days to a few weeks of over opinionated family members and everyone thinking they know better than I do about how to direct my life.

I have all the money and time in the world to direct my life in the manor I want and I know the family just want to look out for me but sometimes looking out for me is upsetting.

I cried. all of this, it pushed me over the edge and I broke down I’m my mums empty house when she went out last night, I could not help my self and I felt like everyone was telling me that this is not the correct decision and that all I’m doing is continuing a life long trail of bad decisions and this will all blow up in my face. They like my fiancee so its not even as though they don’t like her, they really do. but for some reason, buying a house with her is fine but wanting to marry someone that I got engaged to almost four years ago is just to  far.

sorry this is not a happy blog but sometimes life just gets into a bulldozer and rams its self through the center of your life and just brakes everything you thought was concrete in your universe and turns it into broken shards of glass on the floor of your existence.

I Bought A Dog

All my life I’v wanted a dog, a fluffy puppy to call my best friend. Growing up my sister was allergic to dogs so I could never have one,  I spent my whole life going to the park and watching happy dogs and owners playing in the park, knowing that I would never experience that because of my sister.  Now I am not blaming my sister for being allergic to dogs, its not her fault, but I always would imagine coming home, throwing my stuff on my bed and playing with my own little puppy.

So as I fast forward through my life for a moment, my auntie got a dog, we called her Bess and that dog was it for me, my best friend, my play mate and my confidant. I loved that dog more than anything. We went everywhere together and she would always play with me over anyone else. I grew up knowing she was everything to me and I was everything t her, we were inseparable. one day I went to collage in Glasgow, this is a cite that is 271 kilometres (168 miles) away from my life long best friend. Yes at this point I had human friends but no one can fill the space that a dog creates in your life and heart.

One day I get a phone call from my cousin, she was in a flood of tears:

“whats wrong” I asked scared of the answer in case someone had had a terrible accident,

“It’s Bess” she said in a soft tear filled voice, “she has died”

My heart stopped, my entire life paused for longer than I can remember, the world fell silent, I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t think, “your lying” I said to her, chocking back a flood of tears,”YOUR LYING” I shouted down the phone not able to control myself. How could this of happened, she has always been there, of course she cant be dead, she is my best friend, there is no way, is there?

“I’m sorry” once again came the soft voice, “she died last night in her sleep”. I chocked, I could not hold back my tears anymore, I crumbled to the floor, “but i never got to say goodbye” I howled down the phone. “I’m sorry” again came her soft, sad, tear filled voice “she always knew you loved her”.

I spent hours that night just crying into my pillow, my flat mates trying to console me and make me feel better, but nothing worked, my world had been shattered into a million little bits. she was gone and nothing I could do could bring her back.

After a few months of feeling like I let my best friend down because i wasn’t there for her in her final moments I decided I was going to replace the dog shaped hole in my heart with a new puppy, one that I would love and cherish for ever. This is the Eevee section of this story.

Eevee was a small Jack Russell puppy, I bought her when I was living with my, at the time, girlfriend and my flatmate. She was such a cute wee dog, I treated her like a princess, and yes spoilt her rotten. I taught her how to run along side my bike and a few extra tricks to show her off. I was finally getting over the loss of Bess. Eevee was my puppy, yes she had a few problem areas that she was not perfect on, major one was toilet training, she could never get the hang of it, she also had a nervous bladder so peed when excited.

I had Eevee for about a year until me and my girlfriend broke up (story for another time) and I had to move home to my parents. As I said above I cant have a dog at my parents as my sister is allergic so I had to leave my Eevee with my now ex-girlfriend. By all accounts she still has Eevee to this day, almost 5 years on and Eevee is happy and is doing well.

so for the last 5 years I have been back at dear old mum and dads, living happily, got a new girlfriend, well an old girlfriend that I have always been very close friends with and when I moved home we started to date again (again a story for another time). As this story continues along we got engaged and started to look for a house and a month ago we finally found our first house. Not too far from my parents and family, but far enough away that I have my own space to start my life.

We move in in the next few weeks.

Anyway as the title of this would suggest, yes, I have found a new puppy. My fiancée has always wanted a dog when we moved in together and I always said yes as long as we waited until we moved into the hose first. So the other day we were out and about and she said “If we find the perfect puppy, the us puppy, can we get her?” so of course I say “yes” not putting too much thought into it. As the day went on she drove out of our town and along the road to the next few towns over, I asked “where are we going?” and she replied with “to meet our us puppy” and god she was not wrong. when we pulled up I got out thinking how did I get into this but wanted to go in with an open mind. We went into the sellers house and I was handed the most beautiful dog I have ever seen, cream coat with brown splodges, fluffy and cuddly with the most piercing blue eyes you have ever seen. I fell in love with her immediately. we were advised that her dad is part Labrador part German Shepard and her mum is a pure collie. so with her being part lab and part collie we came up with the name Lollie.

We pick her up in just under 4 weeks and I cant wait. Life is finally falling into place. I have a beautiful wife to be, a beautiful dog, a wonderful house and a job that aint half bad.

Now I know a dog is a huge responsibility but with the love and attention Lollie will get and the patience I have to help train her I am sure she will be the best puppy on this planet.

At this point I would like to direct your attention to the picture at the top of this post, this ladies and gentle men is Lollie, not the best photo but by favourite of her so far.

Why I Gave Up

I am over weight. Now I don’t mean hugely obese but yes I am a heavier set guy. on January of 2017 I decided i was going to loose some weight by joining a local slimming world class, it was fantastic. I loved going and I lost a load of weight. I think in total I lost just over a stone and a half (I now weigh like 13 stone 3lbs) and I felt amazing.

So good part of this over now let me get into why I quit and no longer go to a weight loss class and I am back to almost my old ways. Firstly £20 a month to stand on a scale and then be told how much you have or have not lost is a mental thing for me to comprehend, secondly I did it wrong, I went from BK and bakery food straight onto salad and chicken. like I went from nothing healthy straight to nothing unhealthy. Now most of you are probably thinking that that is precisely what yo are supposed to do, full diet change, and yes to an extent you are however I was eating only salad and chicken, a few natural 0% fat yogurts and some plain pasta. Obviously fruit played a huge part of this new diet and to be honest that is what kept me on track most of the time.

Now as a diabetic I have to eat certain foods to stay alive, but on this diet those foods were considered bad for you and would damage your weight loss. I slowly started to loose control of my diabetes which was not good for my health. I was stuck between eating healthy and managing my medical condition.

Now I did try to adjust what I ate to match p with what I needed to eat to keep my bloods correct, however after years of eating badly I had no idea how to manage my diabetes eating healthy. I did seek  medical help however the NHS are not the best people to get advise from as they just don’t seem to care much these days. So anyway I decided for the time being until I have full and 100% control of my diabetes I will go back to eating normal foods.

Now saying I have given up does not mean I am back to eating the exact same foods on the same scale as I have before. I have decided to still eat loads of fruit and change up some dinner foods to be more vegetable orientated. Now I will also admit I do snack on bad foods when I am at work and stressed but if you don’t then maybe you should try it, its amazing. I am not gaining weight anymore however its not being lost at the same rate however I am getting my control back for my diabetes which is way more important.

Maybe some day I can get to the perfect body image I want, for now though I guess eat better is the best I can hope for. I know diabetes can be managed on a diet but I found it very hard and with no guidance I got scared and quit. That is the reason I gave up, not for lack of trying, but rather fear of putting my self back into hospital with another diabetic attack. I will go into that story some other time, but for now know this. Yes I got scared and yes I could have gone on and maybe got on track with a little bit more hard work, but fear of what can happen with poor control of diabetes was too much for me to handle.

Sorry guys.

One Out Of Two

Yes that is correct, according to a new study done my Cancer Research UK one out of two people in the UK born after 1960 will at some point develop some kind of cancer.

Now the above is not just for blogging purpose but is in fact the only way I can think to start this story.

About a year ago my beloved granny developed lung cancer. Now yes she has smoked all of her live and no she never stopped even after developing lung cancer, however this does not help any when you are told the woman who you thought would be around forever may be dying. I was told after a lot of my family already knew, as with most news in my family I am the last to know. I was informed that she had stage 4 lung cancer and may not have long left. I have never felt more upset and alone.

I love my granny more than anything in this world she is a matriarch to the family and someone who I have always respected. I don’t know how many of you out there have had the misfortune to experience the feeling of emptiness that you get when you are given the news that someone you love dearly is not going to be around for long but let me tell you its worse than anything you are ever going to experience. Granny, Mother, Father Granddad, Sister, Brother, other half its not always going to feel the same, but it will always take you to the same dark place where you finally realize that we are all mortal and no one is going to be around forever.

Now yes I have experienced death before in my family and yes it was heart breaking, however it is different knowing someone close to you died in their sleep passing peacefully into what ever is next for us. Being told that someone you love will suffer going through treatment for something you are being told is less likely to work than winning the lottery is a whole lot worse. Yes the person who is ill will be the one suffering but having to watch the person who you were brought up believing was the strongest person in your life be brought down my an invisible force, its not nice.

For a few months my granny was in and out of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to try and remove the melon sized cancer lump from inside her. She lost the thing that made her most proud, her hair, my family did all chip in and buy her a real hair wig and she was happy for that but you could tell it was not the same for her. she bought a woolly hat and she wore that everywhere and in front of everyone even family. she hated loosing her hair.

I remember during the summer we all got together, the whole family, and we had a lovely day at my granny’s in the sun, we made a buffet of food, all the kids were there, my granny was surrounded by everyone who loved her. we got some beautiful photos and some memories that will last forever.

My granny didn’t like many of the photos as she had her hat on in them, but she still had an amazing day.

Now I know where this sounds like it is going and let me assure you now, my beloved granny is still with us and as of a few months ago has made a full recovery and is, as far as I know, 100% cancer free. She still has to put her hat on as the chemotherapy has permanently destroyed her hair, but she is alive and doing better than ever.

I have been chocking back tears during writing this as, though my family may not see it, it is very upsetting for me and writing about it makes it all come back, the first time I was told, the first time I seen her with her hair falling out, her at her weakest. But I never doubted my granny, I knew she could beat it and she did.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope this encourages you to go an visit the ones you love. they will not be around forever and when they are gone that’s it. So please go and see someone you love, tell them what they mean to you and when it is there time, be there, be strong and they will always live on in your heart. Also on this Cancer Awareness Day please donate and help share awareness for all cancers. You may not be affected now, but you never know what may happen tomorrow.

Diabetic life

So I am a type 1 diabetic and there are things that I have found that I do different and things that I have found out all diabetics do. I work in an office with a young 20 something year old girl who is type 1 and a lovely close friend of mine who’s boyfriend is also type one diabetic so for this I have asked about and found out some very interesting information.

Firstly before I go any further let me just clarify what a diabetic is. The diabetes.co.uk definition of a type one diabetic is: “Someone who’s insulin-producing cells in the body have been destroyed and the body is unable to produce any insulin.” Now to me that does not tell you much about how I feel about diabetes and how many millions of diabetics around the world feel about this illness (I hate calling it that,but that is what it is). Diabetes can happen to anyone at anytime of their life. I was two but I know people well past middle age who have been diagnosed.

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at a very young age, just before my second birthday.At this age I had no idea what was happening and according to my parents I thought they hated me. one day I’m happy and living life to its fullest then i became very ill, lost a lot of weight and was drinking water like it was going out of fashion, my mother took me to the local hospital where they told her what was wrong. Looking back on this I can only imagine how my parents must have felt thinking the worst and having no idea what this illness was or how to treat it. Thankfully the wonderful people at my local hospital were able to guide my parents and keep me alive long enough to be able to look after myself.

To me and most people I know diabetes is no big deal, yes it can kill me if not looked after and even not killing me, however with everyone in my life aware of my diabetes it means if anything ever goes wrong I don’t have to try and explain what is going on.

Now I am most definitely not saying diabetes has no down sides, sadly it has many. The lasting effects of badly controlled diabetes can cause a lot of health problems. The main health implications include loss of a limb such as a leg, foot or hand, there is the loss of sight and opening your body up to infection easier than a well controlled diabetic. I have seen people who look drunk in the street, falling over, slurred words being avoided because everyone thinks that the person is just drunk, but in fact it a diabetic who’s blood glucose is dropping beyond a manageable level.

Thankfully its not all doom and gloom and it is a fairly easy thing to control. For 99% of diabetics they have a blood glucose meter and one or two insulin pens. the glucose meter is a small device about the size of an old tamagotchi (for those of us old enough to remember them) that in general, you prick your finger with a lancet (needle) to get a drop of blood, Then you place the blood on a disposable “test strip” that is inserted in your meter. The test strip contains chemicals that react with glucose. Some meters measure the amount of electricity that passes through the test strip to produce a number to represent the amount of sugar (glucose) in your blood.

The insulin pens are as they sound, a large pen looking device that has a hypodermic needle on it that you inject into your body to lower the amount of sugar in your blood.

The above is a very simplistic version of the diabetes treatment and for any diabetic reading this, I do understand I missed a lot out but trust me anyone without Diabetes who wants to know can google this or ask me, if you don’t want to know then let me move on.

Life with diabetes does have its draw backs, you must always test your bloods before and after eating, inject insulin before eating, test bloods before doing any activity (yes including that sadly) and everything you fell sick everyone assumes that its due to the diabetes and not because maybe you are human and can get a cold or stomach bug.

But thankfully its not an end to your life if you have this, there is a gold medalist in rowing Sir Steve Redgrave is a proud type one diabetic. I my self do a lot of mountain biking and I have never had any issues with my diabetes interfering with my biking. As long as you think a head then life is still as open for you as it is for everyone else.

So for all of you diabetics out there, both old and young, new and old to diabetes please remember you are not alone and we need to look out for one and other. And for all of you out there who never knew this was a thing, please remember, that person falling over asking for help on the street may be dying not just drunk. Stop, help and maybe, just maybe you can change a persons live by saving it rather than just assuming he is drunk.