Hello. I feel like I'm 'outing' myself despite the fact that I've had Type 1 diabetes since 1981 - when I was 25. I've tried not to make an issue of it, having always despised being labelled as 'the diabetic'. I've never worn diabetes like a badge of honour and I generally avoid discussing it and can't stand it when people I hardly know secretly check what I'm eating. Many years ago, I was at a dinner party and someone loudly confided to another person at the table that she'd noticed I was having icecream, or whatever it was I was having - the carbs of which I'd catered for with my insulin dose.
Anyway, that was years ago, but the same stuff continues to happen. For example, I recently returned from a cycling tour of Vietnam. (I cycled 630 kilometres and it was fabulous.) I was talking to a new colleague about the experience and my principal - (I'm a secondary teacher) - interrupted and said "And she's diabetic!" It's that old thing. No one would ever blurt out "And she's got haemorrhoids!" Or whatever. Everyone seems to feel they can mind 'the diabetics' business. Anyway, I find it annoying.
So why am I introducing myself on this forum. I've recently started seeing a new endocrinologist who has suggested I start using a pump. In the course of researching the pump, I've found all this rivetting on-line discussion about living with diabetes and I've found it to be wonderful, uplifting and informative. So I thought I'd get involved.
So I'm married and have two kids, aged 21 and 20, a boy and a girl respectively. (And I survived those two pregnancies with diabetes, when there was very little information available as to how to manage the whole thing. No internet as we know it. I think I was blissfully ignorant, and apart from having two enormous babies - both 10lb 8oz - both pregnancies were trouble free.) I'm also, as I mentioned, a secondary English teacher and an occasionally published writer. I write a blog related to my teaching life at
The Fraudulent Teacher
I identify myself as fraudulent because even though I've been teaching for thirty years, I feel less 'earnest' than many of my colleagues and I feel like one day I'm going to be found out.
I'm also a keen cyclist. As well as cycling to and from school every day - usually - I also enjoy longer rides with my old man on the weekends. The Vietnam rides were the longest I'd ever done, including 100k in a day. I have to say, I think the whole experience would have been a whole lot easier without having to manage the diabetes. It was a bit hairy at times. Despite that, the tour was so brilliant that we've already booked another one for next year. Same country; different rides.
I wonder if pumping will improve the experience. Anyway, cheers.
, Many of us who has this condition has had the "are you allowed that" comment as we have insulin to help us. Today we have better insulins better control with the advent of the Blood Glucose Meter.
Linear Mode
