D Blog Week Day 3- Memories

On to day 3 and to quote bittersweetdiabetes.com 'Today we’re going to share our most memorable diabetes day. You can take this anywhere.... your or your loved one's diagnosis, a bad low, a bad high, a big success, any day that you’d like to share.'

My most memorable diabetes day? There's so many, but I guess the most memorable is probably the saddest and the most difficult, the day of my diagnosis.

We received a phone call in the early hours of the morning of May 5th 2010 from pathology, telling us that my blood sugar was WAY out of range at 40mmol/L. However, instead of directing us to the emergency department asap, we were told to wait until morning and not to wake me. Looking back on that, it's a bit of a miracle I made it through the night.

The sense of fear I felt, you can't really explain. I spent the morning questioning what I could've done wrong to have diabetes (after some googling of symptoms it was my first guess). I thought I had type 2, that it would be fine and it wouldn't be what I had deemed 'the needle type'. I felt nauseous the entire trip to the hospital, dreading what I would find there. 

I have an awful habit of associating hospitals with my worst memories, making me upset to the point where I feel physically ill just from the smell. Everything from the moment I walked in is a bit hazy. I do however remember sitting on a hospital bed and looking around, feeling like I didn't belong in emergency, that I was fine, hospital (in my experiences) was for the sick and dying. An endocrinologist however soon came in, delivering the news that I would need insulin injections, but I still didn't know what was wrong with me! (Not once had anyone said diabetes, I guess they all assumed someone else had been in to tell me.)

The rest of the day was an education, having my first insulin injection, using a finger pricker for the first time and understanding that this would never go away. 

I can't really explain what that's like, being told you have a chronic condition. Numbness is probably the best word. I didn't really process it, but I did everything they told me to, managing my diabetes well. To everyone I looked fine, as though I was taking it well, but in reality I spent months in denial, that I didn't have type 1, that they had made a mistake.But then it hit me, and all that was left to ask was 'why me?'. 

Coming to terms with this kind of life is hard. I started off in denial, then a kind of anger at the world for picking ME to be stuck with this, but once I got past the anger and the loss, acceptance came.

I'm a different person to the one I was before my diagnosis. Things like that change you, and sometimes they make you grow up a little too fast. But now I see that this memory is so important and really is a part of me. It's been three years, and as strange as it is, I think it's made me a better and stronger person to the one I was before.