Sweet and Sour- The Type 1 Diabetes Rollercoaster

To think, that this time last year I was hanging out for HSC results, imagining that I would be the most productive uni student ever because I was studying something useful. Now I'm half way through uni exams and realise I have turned into a sloth If I could have the time over again I would do things a little differently. -I would make notes as I go. EVERY.TIME. Not for two weeks and then cram two days before the finals -Attend your 8am lectures. 6 hours of catching up in one day is not a good idea. -Drink less coffee -Stop driving to the train station every day. You walked before you had a drivers license, your legs ACTUALLY still work -And if you do drive, park your car well so you're not relying on "the car gods" to keep it safe all day -Don't get addicted to yet another TV Show, MASH was bad enough during the HSC -Don't buy every textbook- rookie mistake I made twice -Don't write your report the days before it's due. It will take longer...

The HSC students are sitting their final exams, and in my old age I'm getting all reflective. So now, with my extra pearls of wisdom, I can laugh at my first worries about uni: My main concern? "I'm not going to make any friends at uni and will be a little hermit eating my lunch alone in the library" Everyone tried to tell me that I would be fine. That everyone is in the same boat. My brain does not accept these things until I've experienced them myself. I was petrified because on my very first day of uni I had a three hour break scheduled and was in a panic as to what I was going to do with my hermit self for three hours. Let me tell you, I'm not cool. I can be painfully socially awkward, especially meeting new people. I made friends. I made friends before uni had officially started! On enrolment day I met a girl on the bus. I noticed that she had a penguin classic tote bag with The Great Gatsby on it, and decided that odds were I would probabl...

A few of you are aware that in one of my brightest moments I managed to leave my insulin pump (fondly named Dobby) on during an x-ray last week. Pump and x-rays do not go together, and sadly Dobby is now sent off to the land of faulty pumps. I've received my new pump (newly named Severus) and everything is going smoothly again, but I can't help but feel this new pump is different, something's not quite right. I was on multiple daily injections (MDI) for 8 months until I made the decision to get an insulin pump. The pump was supposed to bring freedom from 4 injections a day, letting me eat what I want, wake up when I want, do whatever I felt like doing without being bound to a tight schedule. Ultimately, it did, but at first Dobby and I didn't get along so well. I remember back in January 2011 when I was first hooked up to the pump. It felt weird, and like an enormous and confusing device. I was let loose in the hospital cafeteria for lunch and was half way through ...

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...

My beautiful grandmother (whom I called Nanny) passed away on Thursday, having suffered from dementia for most of my life. Instead of remembering her the way she was for the last 8 years, I'd like to preserve the earlier memories. She was 91, and is now at peace, but I miss her more than I can say. It began with a sound too hard to pronounce, I wasn't able to say Nanna, so turned to Nanny instead and it stuck. When I think of Nanny I think of her pearls, her dresses, the smell of her wardrobe, her bags with the clasps I found fascinating. The ring she gave me years ago, that she placed upside down on my finger. Her yellow- lidded container perched high on the fridge, filled with my favourite pink biscuits covered in hundreds and thousands. Her struggle with seat belts every time she sat in the car, my special job was to help her put it on. Her magazine stacks, doing find a words while she sat with a crossword. Her lotto tickets, always holding out hope that she'd strike...

Low blood sugars make you do stupid things. Stupid, dangerous, scary things. I must have had a whole lot of luck on my side today because this could have turned nasty. I was walking back to redfern station when my blood sugar dropped. I didn't notice it and took a wrong turn.... and so the saga begins. I finally stopped to check it, but there was no where to sit. Stupid low mistake #1: Crouch down and check it in a shifty looking side street. My shifty side street was near a shop, so I suppose low error 1 wasn't too bad. It was then I realised I was going the wrong way. Stupid low mistake #2: Walk back and forth past the same guy on a corner, showing that you're evidently lost. So I managed to head the right way, which brings me to this. Stupid low mistake #3: Keep walking when low, AND walk through a shifty looking side street. I quickly walked through and encountered two women nearby, so I asked which was it was to Redfern station. "Oh it's just u...