Sweet and Sour- The Type 1 Diabetes Rollercoaster

Types of diabetes Meeting new people has pin pointed everyone's number 1 question about type 1 diabetes: "what's the difference between type 1 and 2?" I'm not an expert, but I'll endeavour to cover some of the many (yes more than two!) types of diabetes. Type 1 Diabetes I'm going to be a narcissist and talk about my type first :) Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease- meaning that the immune system has malfunctioned in a certain way to prompt an attack on itself. Your pancreas has two main functions: 1 involves digestion, the other involves the secretion of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that allows for sugar in the blood stream to be balanced and used effectively in the body. Sugar is always present in our blood, however more is introduced when we eat carbohydrates. The role of insulin is to balance this sugar level. In type 1 diabetes the immune system has attacked the beta cells of the pancreas (the cells that produce insulin). This means that...

I've just finished my second week of uni, and it's going reasonably well. But there's something about this change that I hadn't anticipated, no one knows me. Seems obvious right? New place= new people with no idea who you are I think I've said "Hi, I'm Bec" about 20 times this past fortnight and I started wondering, why do I say Bec and not Rebecca? I think it happened like this: a) Rebecca was originally the name I introduced myself with when I was a little kid, and she was very shy and reserved b) Rebecca means I'm in trouble c) Rebecca was used by teachers who I don't know particularly well or like very much d) I had spent the past 3 years or so being called Bec by my entire year group Who knew there was so much in a name? So I had made the decision to go with a more casual variation of my name from the beginning, but next on the list was "what do I do when people ask questions about my diabetes? Am i supposed to tell them?...