blue candles

blue candles.

the sign that diabetes has claimed yet another life.

every time one appears somewhere in the diabetic community it scares me. it scares me just how bad diabetes really is

people think its a pretty harmless disease to have, one that doesn't have much risk of killing you, but they're wrong. 

this morning i found out that a friend from the diabetes community died at the weekend. she had been in hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis (a condition which can be fatal if not treated quickly) she was getting better though, she was going to be discharged.... but she never made it out of there. 

its times like this when i really really hate despise diabetes. its taken the life of yet another person. it shouldn't be like that. 

people need to realise the seriousness of what it can do... how life threatening diabetes can be. 

but right now I'm hurting for the life its taken this time...

RIP Hazel, I'm gunna miss you an awful lot... I'm just glad you don't have to fight this anymore </3

things change

The hardest thing that I've had to come to terms with since being diagnosed with diabetes is how quickly things can change by a huge amount. 

I still remember how when i was first diagnosed i would have Saturdays as almost a day off from diabetes and eat what i wanted and not care too much about my levels, i would be able to eat loads and loads of carbs and only hit a 13-14mmols reading. i remember the panic that would cause. i remember how if i missed doses of my meds it didn't really have much of an effect on my levels... 

then a few months later things got worse. my levels were going higher than i had ever seen... i even got a reading of 31.4 at one point. a packet of crisps could send my levels into the teens and the meds didn't seem to be working anymore... 

and now? now i look at carbs and my levels can shoot up... i can test and have a reading of 19 after a small amount of carbs. I'm now pretty much totally reliant on insulin to keep my levels okay.

things changed. 

over the space of 2.5yrs the amount of meds I've needed on a daily basis has varied... I've had times when i was on nothing, others when i was just on tabs, and then just insulin.

when i started uni in Sept i was just on 2 types of insulin. 7 months later I'm on a whole lot more.

for the last month they've been testing me for asthma, I've wondered for a while whether Ive got it or not, but after a week of severe breathlessness with the cold weather last month i got myself checked out. then i saw the asthma nurse again on Fri and she says that by the sounds of things i am asthmatic, even if the peak flow charts aren't showing definite signs of it. 

so now my meds routine has been complicated further.... now when i get up i have to take my brown preventer inhaler, then with breakfast, lunch and dinner I've got to take my rapid insulin (and if im high or have a snack), then at 9pm I've got to take my background insulin, cholesterol tablet and another dose of the preventer inhaler... then if I'm breathless or exercising on top of all that, i need to take my blue inhaler... 

i know that there are people on a whole lot more meds than that, but to start uni on just the insulins and in less than a year to have that increased by an awful lot is pretty hard to take in... but i carry on every day trying to keep on top of it all.

things have changed a lot for me, but that's whats made me stronger and the person that i am today.

read between the lines

lets just say it to begin with. no beating around the bush.

yet again I'm failing at managing my diabetes.

i know its happened time and time again, and i know people are starting to think I'm doing this for attention with a 'poor me' type attitude. i know people think I'm not listening to their advice and just thinking I'm right all the time.... but I'm not.

I'm not doing this for attention, I'm not trying to get sympathy, I'm not ignoring peoples advice and i definitely don't think I'm right about everything.....

I'm just struggling an awful lot and sometimes i need to get stuff off my chest.

i don't need to hear about complications that will happen if i don't take care of myself, i don't need someone having a go, i don't need people telling me to man up and just get on with it, i just literally need someone to listen to me so i don't just keep bottling everything up inside, so i don't reach that dark place that i was in last year when i didn't have people to talk to about things that were happening.

i often don't talk about the stress I'm under, at home, at uni, at work, with diabetes..... sometimes for me it all just gets to be too much to think about and process all at once. this Easter holidays was a big example of that.

i worked pretty much every day, and even when i wasn't working i was doing work for uni (and stressing about the amount of work i had) or helping to look after my sisters. it didn't help that my mum hurt her hip really badly and couldn't drive or do much around the house meaning that after doing 8-10hr shifts at work i was coming home, helping to sort dinner, doing the washing, making sure my sisters were okay, doing any shopping that was needed and picking up prescriptions of my own and for my mum.... by the end of my 2week 'break' i was knackered.

and in the midst of all that stress, diabetes management was totally dropped. as in, i wasn't testing as much, i wasn't injecting too often or the same size doses i would normally have because work makes me hypo a lot so i figured i would rather be high than low as its less disrupting to driving etc and stress makes me higher anyway which didn't help... 

this time it wasn't me missing injections on purpose to rebel against diabetes, it wasn't me stopping testing and injecting just because i couldn't be bothered.... it was simply too much to be dealing with diabetes on top of everything else at the time, so i often just forgot. i found myself at times realising that it was 4pm and i hadn't tested since i got up, that's not on purpose, it was simply something that was forgotten because of how hectic things were.

i think what i need people to realise is that I'm only 19. i deal with a lot more than i should and at the end of the day i cant always cope with that. i know what i need to do and i know what the consequences are if i don't. so don't have a go at me, just listen, read between the lines of what i say and see what I'm actually going through.