I have been living with Type 1 Diabetes for 53 years and can say that it is a condition that you can NEVER forget about.

I was diagnosed in my final year of university when I was called into the army and then to Vietnam. The medical examination required prior discovered my diabetes. I was very mentally distressed as there had been no diabetes in my family.

I was fortunate that I had always worked in tertiary education and so usually had quite regular daily routines. I was always aware that when I had to give a lecture I made sure that I had enough carbs to deal with the mental and physical aspects of this task.

I did find it mentally challenging when I was required to attend on campus breakfast staff meetings. I had to travel to the campus and inject while sitting around the meeting table with my fellow colleagues. Sometimes disapproving glances were given or comments made if I selected a small piece of a pastry rather than a large piece of ‘French toast’. The assumption being that the toast was better for diabetes than puff pastry.

On a couple of occasions when I had an unexpected hypo at work, I was usually angry at my feeling of failure in controlling the condition. If had severe overnight hypos mostly I still went to work because I felt that a day’s sick leave would be an admission that I was failing to manage my diabetes.

Now that I am retired, I mentally began to unravel from the demands of the condition. All the care with controlling blood sugars over the 50 years never makes you ‘well’.

I am seeing a psychologist now which I has helped me unpack a lot of issues.

Over the decades the support for diabetes management has varied greatly. I had some really good diabetes educators, and some I wasn’t very happy with.
I currently have a great medical team and my wife has always supported me.

In summary, after all these years the technology available to manage the condition has improved enormously but mentally it is still a daily task to make decisions about how much to eat, how much exercise to do, how then this will affect the blood glucose levels. It is a condition which results in you having a mental cage inside. It is very difficult to make spontaneous decisions about what to do each day of my life.

Mentally it NEVER STOPS.

By Geoffery Roberts