Pip Pop starts a blog about living with Type 1 Diabetes, and other funthings ;)

Hello!

So it's the middle of Diabetes Week 2013 and I've been inspired so much by my friends in the Online Diabetes Community ( the #DOC) and their amazing diabetes blogs, that I thought I'd join the party and write one myself.

Hello,

I guess I should start at the beginning? I have had Type 1 Diabetes for 25 years. I celebrated this year for the first time. I bought myself a new Diabetes ID bracelet with a heart charm with my details on and the medic snake icon on the other side. I don't think we had those in 1988.

In fact, I don't really remember much about 1988. I was diagnosed a few weeks before I turned 6, on my Dad's birthday. I asked him recently what he remembers about it, and he said it was the most depressing and upsetting day of his life. I don't think we had any birthday cake that day that's for sure! I wasn't taken into hospital, didn't stay over night or anything like that. Our GP had sent us directly to the paediatrician's clinic in the next town. I don't really remember it. I know we got sent home after they gave me some injections at the hospital, and my parents were told to practise on an orange before giving me insulin injections for the rest of my life.

I'm still here, so obviously they worked out how to do it one way or another!

Diabetes and I have had our ups and down over the years - there was a lot of red/yellow/green food checking in the early years, daring my brother to see how fast he could run upstairs and get my needles before Neighbours began on telly, not being allowed sweets or chocolate (apart from a giant banana split one holiday in France?!), learning to inject myself, ignoring the need to do any blood tests for a considerably long time (yes, it was about 15 years!), hypos during exams, and dissertations, the rule I had about making sure I ate before bed and after drinking at University, living abroad for a year, moving to London and finally getting myself back on the ladder with the amazing help and friendly advice of my Diabetes Specialist Nurse, without whom, I think I'd be in a dangerous crumble somewhere.

I've just got an insulin pump on loan, and am waiting for a date to get my own machine. But I can bore you all with that another time.

x