Sweet and Sour- The Type 1 Diabetes Rollercoaster

Now that I’ve started my last year of uni, I’m spending a lot of time trying to be a professional. I’m currently on my first 6-week placement of the year, living a few hours drive away from home. For 4-5 days a week, I’m treated almost like a qualified speech pathologist. For 8.5hours a day, 4-5 days a week, I wear my speech pathologist hat. Then I come home, take it off and go back to being Bec.  When I’m back home in Sydney and working on health consumer committees or in advocacy roles, I’m wearing my advocate hat. The problem is, the hats are very different. I’ve got Bec, a health advocate, and a professional. When I’m wearing the advocate hat I’m very loud about my diabetes. I use my experiences to attempt to make change in the health care system, albeit on a small level. I am a person with feelings, thoughts and ideas on making change. When I’m just myself, I’m also pretty open with my diabetes. I test my sugar in front of strangers and usually feel comfort...

Today’s post begins a series of conversations between myself and Frank of Type 1 Writes . We first connected through our blogs, and our mutual friend type 1 diabetes. Despite our three year age difference, we have discovered that we both have quite a lot in common. Starting with the fact that we were both diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in May 2010, only a couple of days apart. We’ve started these conversations with the aim of highlighting how type 1 diabetes impacts two people of a similar age, who were diagnosed at slightly different stages of life. Although this is our own unique series of Type 1 Talks , we would like to give credit to Laddie (Test Guess and Go) and Kate (Sweet Success) for the inspiration from their Type 1/Type 2 Conversations series . Our first Type 1 Talk is titled Back to the Beginning. This isn’t your typical diagnosis story.  We aren’t specifically revisiting diagnosis, DKA, or the signs and symptoms of type 1. I guess we’re focussing more on the ...