It is said that the teenage years are confronting, confusing and full of misdirection. Well that is unless you have decided that your health is more important and that you have put growing up early with an auto immune disease as a priority. Well that is what I thought was best from a holistic view of the world. In fact I hated having T1D. I hated that I was different, I hated that I had to concentrate on what I ate and what exercise would do to me. I hated that I felt that know one in my family knew what I was going through. As you can imagine all of this perceived hatred caused me to withdraw into myself and become an introverted personality. Making friends was difficult. Not that it should of been but more because I didn't want people close enough to understand what could happen if I went low or high. Or even for them to see me inject. As crazy as it sounds it was still seen not to be right to inject in public. When required I would find a toilet and go into a cubicle and inject away from prying eyes. I know looking back now that looks really dodgy and only druggies should hide away cause they have a problem to hide and I have now come to terms with everything and I will inject where ever I need to. Prying eyes can judge but if they ever ask then I will educate.
Along with the usual defiance of a teenager I went through my time of ignoring parts of my diabetes and the biggest was not testing. I would sometimes go days or weeks without a test but never once did I not give myself my insulin and not eat. I suppose that not testing, even though it is like driving a car blind, I felt that it was my way if being a little normal. My mum decided to try and scare me into testing one day and took me into the royal children's hospital to speak to the head endocrinologist. The discussion started with the usual questions, how often do you test? Why don't you test more? Do you think that it is enough? Do you think that you can manage your T1D by just the way you feel?
As with anytime you are forced to do something my barrier was up from the start. The endo could have told me anything and it would have gone in one ear and out the other. I believe that from all the endo's and doctors I have seen they know the clinical methods and reasons of T1D but what they don't understand is the emotional and the physiological effects that it has on each and every one of us. The acceptance of a life long disease takes time. You have days where you can take on the world and conquer it without even blinking however for every one of those days there are days where you can find a dark hole, crawl in and hide from everything (including T1D). The effect a low BSL can have on a persons mental state can be devastating. Well on me it can anyway. After serious lows where I have been low for a while and not noticed the effect on my overall body and also my mind is a strain. There has been times where I have broken down in tears, and call it self pity if need be, but at that time my body and mind is so tired of the ongoing battle and war that I just want it over. This could last from minutes to hours but from there I realise that life moves on and I need to pick my self up again and work out what happened. Was it over calculation for my food, was it exercise, was it stress, was it due to weight loss, was it sickness or was it an unknown cause. Sometimes it is difficult to tell but after looking at the hours prior to the hypo there is usually an answer.
Anyway back to those years where I would be moving from teenage boy to a young adult. At the end of the last paragraph I mentioned that a cause for a hypo could have been sickness but on a dangerousness note sickness can be just that... Dangerous! One day in these years I had become ill. To me (in the beginning anyhow) it was a normal sickness and I had been sick whether it was a cold or gastro or anything similar in the past however this time I was really sick. I had started to vomit and my parents thought it be best to have me centralised in the house and under the fan to cool down. 5, 10, 15 hours passed and the vomiting did not stop and my mum decided that my dad should take me into hospital as they were worried that something could go wrong. I haven't really spoken about my dad much and I suppose it is because he left the management of the kids and their health to mum but that is whole other chapter to discuss. I was taken to the emergency department age was still sick sitting in the waiting area. It wasn't long before I was taken through to see if this could be treated. Within minutes and without doing a BSL the doctor had decided that my symptoms were that I were hypoglycaemic and instructed the nurse to administer glucose or some method to raise my BSL ( you will have to forgive some of the vagueness in this situation but you will understand in a second). The nurses set about doing as the doctor asked. They gave the medication and started to take the regular bloods. Unbenost to me my dad was watching from the sidelines and even though he was a police officer who had seen more than any normal person all of a sudden past out and went straight to the ground of the emergency department. It was then I learnt that my dad wasn't invincible and that his weakness was blood coming out of his third son. The nurses rushed to his side leaving me sick and in a terrible amount of pain and made sure he was now sitting down and that he was ok. By the time the nurses had brought their attention back to me the doctor had returned and had finally instructed the nurse to do a BSL test to see what my blood suger was doing. Please realise that the previously treatment was given without knowing and because I was sick and my dad didn't even really know what a BSL was no one could push the point. The BSL was done and to everyone's astonishment I was heading to a diabetic coma with a BSL of 56. When normal BSL and the target level is between 5and 6 this was redicously high. The sickness and pain was now understandable to everyone. The frantic movements of the doctors and nurses was now a blur. I was on the edge of going to sleep, and that is not in a good way.From that point 2 days past where I was admitted to the critical unit and all I can remember was on occasion waking up with someone either talking to me or holding my hand. The tiredness was encompassing and even though I woke in those 2 days there was no energy to open my eyes and interact. On the third day I woke and the next 3 days it was a matter of moving from the critical room and having the eyes and tests done to make sure I was ok. Thankfully I was and luckily to this day there are no complications. The sickness and pain from this ordeal is difficult to explain but what I do know is that is that I never want to go there again. Oh and yes my dad was fine just couldn't stand all that blood, not that he will admit that.
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