Sweet and Sour- The Type 1 Diabetes Rollercoaster

When I was a little kid I had some troubles with speech, I stammered for a while and had a lisp. The stammer went away, the lisp didn't. My doctor advised us that there was no reason to correct it, "think of Ita Buttrose" he said. So we left it alone. My mum is pretty brilliant, so she taught me that differences in me were what made me special. I had a birthmark over my eyes and forehead that used to be pointed out and compared to chickenpox. She taught me that it wasn't a bad thing, it just made up a little part of me. My lisp was exactly the same, just a little part of me. The birthmark faded, but the lisp stayed, and I was perfectly fine with that. But then I chose the most inconvenient profession, I decided I wanted to be a speech pathologist. My lisp was suddenly front and centre, the polite avoidance of talking about it was gone. I've started speech therapy and am working hard on correcting it. And I'm okay with that- I like to use myself as a gu...

There's a negative stigma around the term 'mental illness', to some people, having a mental illness means you're 'crazy'.The stigma is so strong that I'm nervous about putting this out there. I struggle with anxiety, and have done for a long time. It's just as real as any physical condition like my diabetes. And I'm certainly not the only one. Everyone deals with anxiety to some extent. We all have so much going on that it's become the norm. A little stress and a little worry can be a good thing. But there's a difference between nerves before an exam and ending up physically ill from the stress of what should be stress-free daily interactions. I don't really want to go into my own anxiety in much depth but here's a basic rundown of some of the troubles that come with high level anxiety. Obviously this varies person to person. - You analyse quite a fair bit of what you do and what you say to people - You play your thoughts o...