Name:

Scot Lester

Age:

37

Diabetes type:

Type 2

Diabetes Forum member Biohazard tells us his story about his diabetes.

I was diagnosed in May 2012, after feeling very tired in the afternoons, even falling asleep which was not great as I am a stay at home dad to my 4 year old boy.

I also developed

thrush

on my tounge. I did not have any other classic

symptoms of diabetes

like thirst or going to the toilet – I was just tired. My wife ordered me to the doctors and I was given some mouth drops and sent on my way.

This did not clear up so I went back, this time a full

HbA1C blood test

was arranged which came back as 11.1%. I was type 2 diabetic and given metformin to take daily.

I loved bread!

This was not a shock to me as my mum was also type 2 (on insulin) and my dad was

type 2 on medication

– both of who are no longer with us. I also had the most amazing sweet tooth and loved bread!

Without delay I found my way to Diabetes.co.uk after a quick Google search and joined up to the Diabetes Forum and was reading for hours. My decision was made to very low carb/high fat diet and I went to the shops and got a

blood glucose meter

, which very quickly became my best friend.

Cutting down on carbs

I decided on no more than 35g carbs per day and wrote everything I ate on my phone app for counting nutritional info. I don’t note what I eat now unless its new food. I also check my levels before and after every meal.

Within 1 week my levels were great and with my GPs acceptance I did not take the additional

metformin

he advised and stayed on just 1 a day.

I went to see the DN and she said no testing was needed – once a week will do and to eat starchy carbs with every meal. With what I read on the

Diabetes Forum

this seemed very bad advice so I ignored this and followed the information given to me by other diabetics for whom their diet was working for. And, for whom have been getting great results!

HbA1c of 5.5%

Just over 3 months later I visited the DN after another set of blood tests of which the results were an HbA1c of 5.5%. The nurse was amazed as she had never had a patient at her surgery with as good results in such a short time – if indeed under 6% (which was a little shocking and understandable as they keep saying eat carbs with every meal)!

My

cholesterol

also went from 4.5 to 3.5 which was great.

We agreed that I’d come back in another 3 months and discuss coming off meds altogether. I did, however, 2 days after seeing her, stop taking my meds and this has had no affect on my levels. I do take multivitamins,

cinnamon

and

bitter melon

tablets daily as these are found to stabilise blood glucose levels.

My levels are now pretty much in the region between 4.8 and 5.5 most of the time.

Scot’s findings

I’ve got a couple of rules I’d advise for other people with diabetes:

• Get a great blood glucose meter, I have a
  
  FreeStyle Lite meter
  
  which is small and reliable.
• Do exercise, I go to the gym at least twice a week and do low impact for at least an hour.
• Eat only whole foods and cook yourself, I also bake my own cakes using almond flour and sweeteners, it makes me feel like I am eating forbidden food with little or no impact on my blood glucose levels.

If you’ve found inspiration from Scot’s story – or would just like to speak to Scot – get in touch with him on the

Diabetes Forum!

Name:

Marcus Grip

Age:

–

Marcus’s story is not a typical story of diabetes. The particular way Marcus developed diabetes has allowed him to come off insulin, whilst keeping

blood sugar levels

stable.

When I was 9 years old, I was diagnosed with diabetes. In the beginning it was very strange, for almost two years. I barely needed any insulin, I could eat almost whatever and the doctors looked very surprised!

It was like my

pancreas

still produced insulin, like it wanted to fight and keep itself alive. But eventually that decreased and went away after around two years.

I went to different kinds of healers like a Qi Gong master from China, Kinesolog, Acupuncturist, Massage therapist.

I ate or drank a lot of different stuff (like bitter cucumber) that really helped me the first years.

They all told me I had “

fake diabetes

” and that it could be cured and that it had something to do with the stomach and the kidneys.

But since I was a teenager I did not take the responsibility and rarely listened to what they said and what my body said.

I drank alcohol and ate a lot of bad food contributing to a

high HbA1c

for around two or three years.

Vegetarian lifestyle

Then one day, I got a call from my mother telling me that my father had asked for help after

almost 20 years of alcoholism

I was shocked and right away I determined to stop too and become a more healthy being.

A lot of help and wisdom from my mother made this easier than expected. I had just 2 months earlier become a vegetarian and step by step I experimented and explored a healthier lifestyle.

I tried Raw Food and in 2010 I started with a

LCHF diet (low carb high fat)

and it went pretty well but still those shots everyday.

In April 2011, I went to a frequency healer, recommended by my mum and I wanted to give it a shot. This is a machine invented by a person from NASA which calculates the frequencies that your body is sending out into the computer. You can then see what instabilites you have.

Pancreas infection

The conclusion from the visit was that I had an infection in my pancreas, rather than the conventional types of diabetes! Well this was very shocking after 11 years of having

diabetes symptoms

The healer instructed me to eat alkaline food since the stomach was the issue as to why I did not heal from the infection. I did so and 6 weeks later I came back and my results were great according to the computer as well as with my blood sugar.

She said that with the number of years you’ve had diabetes, it will take many months to fully recover so I am still in the recovering process.

Volunteering in Costa Rica

I was volunteering in Costa Rica for 3 months, Aug-Nov 2011, and had a hard time with the different food and carbohydrates which made my blood sugar rise again but now I have really put effort into this and since I am now choosing my own food again, I have great results.

Sometimes I no longer need my

long acting insulin

Free from diabetes

I also discovered that when I am doing training and exercise, that I truly enjoy, (like skateboarding, parkour, snowboarding and surfing) that my blood sugar level gets lower and stabilizes my control. I discovered that you need the joy in the exercise to get great results.

At least that goes for me and that is my story of how I became

free from diabetes

• Marcus runs his
  
  own website devoted to diabetes
  

Name:

Gillian Peace

Diabetes type:

Type 1

See more:

LeicsDiabetic Mums

I was diagnosed with

type 1 diabetes

four years ago. I had just returned from a holiday in Thailand where I thought it was the heat making me drink and wee so much.

I lost a stone in four weeks, which was a bit unusual, as I usually pile it on

when on holiday

I mentioned my problem to my practice nurse and luckily she was on the ball.

Phobia of hospitals

After a urine sample and a prick on the finger she ran off to get the

duty doctor

My blood sugar was 33. I was admitted to hospital where I spent the next three days. I already had a needle and hospital phobia so I was pretty petrified!

Everyone couldn’t believe how well I looked but how poorly I actually was – I suppose the sun tan helped with that.

The thought of

injecting four times a day

was scary enough without the thought of having to prick my fingers too. I met the diabetes team. It took ages to learn everything and hypos really scared me.

Hyperglycemic with ketones

I had to take time off work as I went from being

hyperglycemic

with ketones down to

hypoglycemic

and back again over the first month or so. Initially I had no understanding of carb-counting, but I eventually stabilized. I managed to get my hba1c to around 7 and last year I decided to have a baby.

That was even harder! At first

I had hypo’s galore

and by the time I was 7/8 months pregnant I was injecting about 7 times a day and taking 4 times the amount of insulin than pre-pregnancy. I changed hospitals, going to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, where I learnt not to ‘feed the insulin’ but to carb-count.

Blood sugar control through pregnancy

The point was that I had good, tight blood sugar control

throughout my pregnancy

Charlie was delivered by cesarean section at 36 weeks. Luckily I had a fantastic consultant who prepared me for theatre and talked everything through with me in advance. I’d been going every two weeks to a diabetic anti-natal clinic and was lucky enough to have this team with me on the day, which made a huge difference.

Dawn phenomenon

About three months after the birth I started suffering with what is called the ‘dawn phenomenon’, which is where your

blood sugars naturally start to rise

in the morning. I needed to do an injection between 3am-5am every morning to bring my sugars down.

Of course that left me feeling rubbish the next day with no energy at all. My consultant put me on the waiting list for an

insulin pump

to help solve this problem. I’ve been on the pump for about three months and feel so much better than I did before.

Before I’d had Charlie I was scared to have a pump permanently attached to me. It has still taken a while to get used to, but I can now honestly say that I wouldn’t give it back. It gives me more freedom and I can usually hide it so people don’t know I’m wearing one.

Coffee group for diabetic mothers

While I was attending the hospital for my pregnancy I met a couple of ladies with diabetes. We now meet up as a group for coffee every now and then, sometimes even at the clinic if we all have appointments.

We have Type 1,

Type 2

mums and a

gestational diabetic

mum too. We also have a Facebook page. It’s great support and a couple of the ladies really helped me with my pump and convinced me to give it a go – I owe them a big thank you, so THANK YOU!

Name:

Jill Wright

Occupation:

Retired

Jill was diagnosed with diabetes in 1951 – when she was just 22 months old. So she’s lived with

Type 1 diabetes

virtually all her life.

She has seen some changes, some of which were so long ago that she can only vaguely remember them.

Open about diabetes

Jill’s very open about her diabetes, as maybe you would be if you’ve essentially always had it. “I’ve never been secretive about it,” she says, “I think the more open you are with people, the better.  After all, at some time you might need their help. It’s not the first thing I say when I meet someone new, but I don’t worry about telling people if I need to explain things.”

Diabetes diagnosis

She can’t

remember being diagnosed

, but she’s been told that she became a very thirsty baby and started to waste away. “The local GP were a bit slow picking up on it, but they’d never seen a baby so young with it. I was put in hospital and it was back in the days when parents were only allowed to come in during visiting hours. My mother said I used to scream when she had to leave me. It hasn’t marked me for life though, I’m lucky not to remember it.”

Not in the family

As far as she is aware, Jill did not have diabetes in the family, though she muses, “it wasn’t a long time before then that people with diabetes just died, so maybe there had been someone in the family who had it but died of it before I was born and I did not know about them.”

Jill’s right that only a generation before diabetes would have been a killer. At the time of her diagnosis, he mother was told that Jill ‘would not make old bones.’ There were no

tips for people with diabetes

at the time.

60 years later

Sixty years later and Jill is doing just fine, thank you very much! She’s on two injections a day (she uses animal insulin) and does four or five blood tests daily too. “I like to know what’s going o,” she says, but she also remembers the many years she was diabetic and did not have a blood test meter. “The technology was not there’” she says, “it just wasn’t possible when I was growing up.”

She also says that in the early days there were not a lot of rules or regulations about diet, “I ate what I felt I needed. All we had back then was the ‘wee’ test – five drops of urine plus 10 drops of water in a test tube then pop a tablet in and it would fizz then change colour. If you were blue or green you were all right. If it went orange then you were in trouble!”

Blood testing and carb counting

Blood testing

and

carb-counting

came in later.

As a child Jill was treated by a local GP whom she recalls was “a nice, kind man.”  In her teens she went to a different clinic and she recalls there were “very fierce, if anything went wrong you felt it was your fault.

We counted

carbohydrate ‘exchanges’

and had to calculate our insulin. It felt like leaping over hurdles all the time, with loads of maths involved. I hated it, and didn’t stick to the rules!”

Despite what sounds like rebellion, Jill kept her head and had a sensible approach to her diabetes and she knows she’s doing fine, although she also feels that her regime is now a little old-fashioned by modern NHS standards.

Good care from the NHS

“I get good care, but most people are on the human insulins and on four injections a day, so the younger nurses aren’t used to someone on bovine insulin taking just two a day.  I do seem to be a part of a small and dwindling group of people on animal insulin, but it works for me. I’ve learned what my body needs and what makes it work, and why change?”

One thing Jill thinks has also changed, unlike her

insulin

but like the technological advances in blood testing, is that “Medical people are much easier to talk to now, it feels like more of a partnership, where you’re in control of your health and they are assisting you, not telling you off all the time!”

Name:

Peter Shaw

Diabetes type:

Type 1

Occupation:

Vice Chairman of the British Kitesurfing Association

Peter Shaw’s father was an aircraft engineer and his family was stationed overseas in Brunei when Peter was

diagnosed with diabetes

He recalls, “The only injections I’d had before then had been immunization jabs which I’d really hated having. I was 10 when I was diagnosed and my main memory is being told I was going to have injections for the rest of my life. I was truly terrified of the thought.”

“I also remember that

Type 1 diabetes

was so rarely seen that the doctors at the hospital were calling back to colleagues in the UK for tips on stabilizing a newly diagnosed T1, as most hadn’t studied this since training.”

Diabetes in the 1980s

This was in the mid-1980s and as there were issues starting to affect the regio, combined with Peter’s age,

educational needs

and diagnosis of diabetes, the family decided to return to the UK.

Better care in the UK

“The care was miles better in the UK,” says Peter, the care received in Brunei was excellent, it just took them a while to get up to speed “I was seen by a paediatrics team at Horsham Hospital. But back then, blood test meters were almost the size of laptops and lancing devices were like something from the French Revolution! I had a very early Ames Autlolet but my mum had to do the lancing. The

blood test meter

was a Glucometer, also by Ames, that my dad had to get imported via his company from the USA as they simply weren’t available. It was hard work for those around me.”

OmniPod insulin pump

Today Peter is on an

OmniPod insulin pump

that has an on-board blood test meter. He chose the OmniPod because of his involvement in kite surfing. He is vice-chairman of the British Kite Surfing Association and regularly spends extended periods of time in a wet suit. “As I do a lot of watersports, I needed a pump that did not have tubing,” explains Peter.

“I can get a wet suit on over the pod without pulling it out and tell it what to do with the handheld device. I have no worries about tangling or snagging. It’s waterproof, although in all honesty nothing is really sea-water proof so in this respect, the pods 3-day life span is a boon as they don’t have to survive past that time.

I put the PDM in a watertight case when I’m not using it. I use a Multiclix finger-pricker as I don’t have to handle any sharps and it’s reliable, solid and painless but could do with being smaller. It’s a great bit of kit. It’s all so much better than in the old days!”

Peter has learned from experience that testing after the first 30-40 minutes on the water is key, as this is the window when adrenaline (and being cold) can mask

hypo symptoms

“I force myself to come in and test after the first half hour and then I know I’m okay for another hour or so.  After that, I just have to be careful when I start to tire as that can also cover symptoms.

And I never go on the water without a couple of

sachets of glucose gel

stashed in my harness!”

Active and healthy!

Despite an active (and relatively healthy) lifestyle and constant

carb counting

, Peter says that there has been a slow decline in his control over the last few years which was the main reason for the switch to pump-therapy.

He had an

HbA1c

of 5.2 in 2007 and it’s now 7.2 – still a very respectable level although it is higher.

“My care team at the hospital have been great, especially my diabetes specialist nurse. They’re behind me all the way. I’m hoping to go on a CGM (

continuous glucose monitoring

) trial too. I’ll give anything a go if it helps me live the lifestyle I want.”

Name:

Richard Lane

Occupation:

Chairman of Diabetes UK

Richard Lane is someone who lived with diabetes for a long time before being one of the first people in Britain to have pioneering surgery in 2004-05 to have

pancreatic islet (stem) cells

from three organ donors put into his body where they began to secrete insulin, ‘curing’ him of diabetes.

A cure is coming

He is an impassioned speaker, eager to share his experience to give other people with diabetes hope that a

cure

is coming, even it if is still on the horizon for most at the moment.

He says, “I have been extremely fortunate to have had break-though treatment, which makes me incredibly happy, as it does my wife, children and all those who care about me. My thanks go to all of them. My diabetes story started when I was 32. I had odd

symptoms

and it proved hard to diagnose. I was really quite ill and thought I had cancer because of an extraordinary loss of weight and other relevant symptoms. I actually said, ‘hooray’, when I was

diagnosed with diabetes

It was a relief, but little did I know what was in store for me!”

Considering islet cell transplantation

In 2004, after retiring through ill health, Richard was asked to consider islet cell transplantation.

At this point there had only been seven people in

Canada

and two people in England who had undergone the operation. After two months of extensive tests, risk assessment and

education

, which involved his wife as well as himself, he was put on the waiting list for his first transplant.

“The support that I received from the team of surgeons,

doctors

and specialist nurses, including a psychiatrist, was fantastic,” he remembers.

15,000 beta cells

As many as 15,000 beta cells are required per huma, per kilo of weight, and at the time Richard was the oldest, tallest and heaviest of the patients operated on to date, needing 1.25 million islet cells.

Each operation involved the insertion of a probe with a canula on one end, which is pushed in between the ribs, through the liver and into the portal vein.

Beta cells in plasma are dripped in and are distributed into the liver. It can take up to three transplants as many of the islet cells die during the process.

It was a good result though. Richard says, “I was the first person in the UK to completely come off insulin. This situation continued for about a year, but I have now had to go back on to insulin. I’d contracted a viral infection from which some antibodies developed which are damaging my lovely new beta cells, and now I have to supplement my natural insulin via the pump and

count carbs

again.”

“The fact is that my first two aims have been achieved – to eliminate

hypos

and to stabilise the diabetes-related complications I was experiencing, so to not have fully continued to achieve the third aim (to come off insulin) is a small price to pay. I’ve not had a major hypo since the day before my first operation. If necessary, and if a suitable drug can be found to resolve the immuno-suppression problem I might have another transplant, which may correct this.”

Chariman of Diabetes UK

In November 2008,

Diabetes UK

announced that Richard Lane OBE had been elected as the charity’s new President. In the UK, Diabetes UK had set up the Islet Cell Consortium, which brought together nine islet research centres from around the country to ensure the technique was available here for the benefit of people with diabetes.

With the help of its members and supporters, Diabetes UK raised the money needed to pay for the first ten islet transplantations to be done in the UK according to the “Edmonton Protocol”.  Since then, Diabetes UK has secured funding from the

NHS

to transplant other patients.

Islet cell transplantation has now been accepted by the NHS as proven and recommended

treatment

, but only for those who have lost their warnings of hypos, and who have other serious problems with their diabetes.

This restriction is mainly because of the shortage of organ donors, although research to produce stem cells in the laboratory is proceeding very satisfactorily, and if successful, will resolve the problem of the shortage of organ donors.

However, the therapy is not yet sufficiently well advanced to guarantee
insulin independence and therefore freedom from diabetes, but the signs are really encouraging.

Name:

Dean Salisbury

Diabetes type:

Type 1

Dean was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was eleven years old.  This summer, he went on an

insulin pump

He says, “It’s like science fiction! In the old days we boiled our glass syringes to make them sterile, and either had to wee on a stock or – going back even further in time – pop a tablet in a test tube with a mix of water and wee and waited for it to stop fizzing and change colour.”

Blood test strips gripe

While he’s been fairly happy with his healthcare to date, he admits that recent attempts to restrict the number of

blood test strips

he’s allowed has left him pretty disgruntled.

“The big cost to the NHS is people who, for one reason or another, can’t control their diabetes and it leads to all the horror stories –

kidney failure

and so on.  I must be a relatively cheap date by comparison. Why restrict my strips when all I’m doing is what my consultant has recommended me to do? The point being that if I take care of myself now then I won’t cost the NHS a fortune in the future.”

One pot a week

Instead of being prescribed enough test strips for a month I have been told that I am only allowed one pot per week because of the cost but across the month I still get the same amount and in a time when we are all trying to save the planet I am forced to drive to my doctors at least four times per month, before the pump it was just once.  It just does not make sense considering I have very little impact on the resources available at my surgery and I have to rely on others to collect my prescription as I just cant keep getting time off work.

DAFNE

“I’m sure I’ll work out who’s the right person to talk to get this addressed, but I shouldn’t have to,” says Dean. As part of his interest in his own healthcare Dean’s done a Bertie – a variation of the better-known

DAFNE course

– which was held at the hospital where he goes to diabetes clinic. “I think it did me good to go – you do get a bit rusty on carb-counting and slip into bad habits.

Plus, it was up-to-date. The last time I had to learn all about food and insulin was decades ago – although it’s one long learning curve when you have diabetes as you learn about food and insulin ‘on the job’ as it were. But it did give me a boost to do some more learning at this stage.

Now a pumper

“Since becoming a ‘pumper’ my life has changed dramatically and I feel so much better for it and the support I get from Broomefield Hospital is first class, I upload information from my pump on a weekly basis and adjustments are made to my régime as seen fit, I don’t even have to go to the hospital I can sit at my desk and discuss with

Specialist Nurse

, Margaret Bardle, as she will have all of the data from my pump on her desktop and will advise me accordingly.

“I do not miss the old black-and-white days having to wait in a hospital waiting room for 5 hours to be told your wee is the wrong colour, and told to go away and don’t even look at things that may have sugar in them.

“Now I have no fear of

hypos

, the pump has rectified that situation for me and I will be for ever grateful to Dr. Fletcher and his team at Broomefield Hospital as now I look forward to my hospital appointments.  They are not getting my pump back… ever!”

Name:

Lee Calladine

Diabetes type:

Type 1

Occupation:

Events co-ordinator

See more:

DRWF

Talking about his diagnosis, Lee Calladine’s first description of diabetes is that “it was disorienting – I was very much feeling like a rabbit in the headlights.”

Diabetes diagnosis

It was eight years ago that Lee went to stay with his cousin and they had a Chinese takeaway and watched a DVD. But that night Lee could not stop drinking – complaining of a really horrible thirst, and his cousin asked – jokingly – “What’s wrong with you?”

Lee thought he had a virus and that it would pass. But at work that week he was losing his temper and continued to feel bad and he noticed that weight was dropping off him. “I had this intense thirst, I was bad tempered and didn’t feel like myself at all. I was drinking anything I could – orange juice, coke. You name it, not knowing that I was in fact making everything worse,” he remembers.

Do I have diabetes?

Later that week he bumped into a friend who was a nurse who, after exchanging just a few words with him, told him he had

diabetes

and had to go to the GPs immediately. He went the next morning and was told to go direct to the hospital.

“I was there a few hours, spent a little time with the diabetes specialist nurse and was put in insulin there and then and sent home a few hours later,” Lee says, “It felt a little surreal at the time, it all passed in a bit of a blur. I listened to so much information, talked to a dieticia, then went homen, sat down and just felt lost.”

But Lee wasn’t about to take the diagnosis lying down. In retrospect, he says, “They were great at the hospital but it was not enough. I did not jump in and read everything, but I did decide to learn as much as I could I went about it quite methodically. I do feel lucky that due to training to be a chef I did have some knowledge about food. Knew how carbs worked what they were and how they would work in my body. I had knowledge about nutrition.

Diabetes for Dummies

I read

Diabetes for Dummies

and my mindset was, ‘get on with it’. I learned what I could and I still do. I think you do have to become your own doctor to an extent. I let it become a part of my life and did not fight it, or deny it. In a way getting the diagnosis was a relief – I really thought I was dying and I never want to experience that thirst again.”

Today, Lee not only looks after his own health – he is a part of a charity that funds diabetes research. Not everyone who has a chronic condition wants to spend all day working on the same thing, but Lee sees his work with the

Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation

(DRWF) as a ‘double edged sword’, explaining, “It’s true that I live and breath diabetes, both professionally and personally,but I’m in an enviable position of having access to a wealth of healthcare professionals and I have information at the tips of my fingers.”

Education events

Lee plans and attends diabetes education events for DRWF. “I get little refreshers all the time about how to stay healthy from people who are leaders in their field,” he says. “Also I know we’re doing good work, which helps me feel better about having all aspects of diabetes around me all the time – some of it is a little bit scary sometimes. But then I get to be excited about a new

blood test meter

, or know to get organized enough before I go on

holiday

so that I can feel like it’s a holiday and not be worrying about what I’ve forgotten to bring with me. I get to see new products as soon as they come out and news and updates on research and treatments… things are good in the main!”

Name:

Rebecca Weddell

Age:

35

Diabetes type:

Type 1

For her day job, Rebecca Weddell makes unique lampwork glass beads for ‘discerning designers’. That sounds simple enough, but when you realise it involves A blow-torch, you think twice.

She says, “I’ve been hard at work today teaching two students at once how to play with fire to melt glass and make beads, but WE took regular breaks to cool down from the torch flame!”.

Diagnosed: 24 years ago

One hot lady, as they say. Rebecca is in fact 35 and was diagnosed in 1986 when she was 11. She’s now a 5-a-day injector and does a lot of blood tests – she admits she’s “a little obsessive” as she does up to ten a day but she also has very good control as a result. But it’s not just the blood testing that does it.

“I had amazing care when I was diagnosed, I was taught to carb count and have always done it,” she says. She’s also a recent graduate of the SADIE course at Eastbourne hospital, a local equivalent of DAFNE. She explains, “Having done the course I find that I want to have more of a clue about what I’ve eaten in terms of its carb content and seeing how it’s affected my blood sugar.”

DAFNE

DAFNE stands for Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating and the courses aimed at people with type 1 diabetes. Most PCTs now offer some sort of DAFNE course, like this one at Eastbourne.

Even people who’ve had diabetes a long time can benefit from the courses.

Partly, it makes you go back to basics, with a refresher course on how insulin works, why counting carbs helps, but it’s also good to talk to other people with diabetes and share your experiences.

Using a diary

Rebecca’s started to use a diary again – a simple practice that most of us stop doing, but it’s an old stand-by that can really help if you go through a bad spell when good control is proving elusive. She explains,  “I’m enjoying plotting dots on the graph in my new blood test diary, partly as it reminds me of the 1980s. Back then, I remember getting through reams and reams of photocopied A4 charts.

Those were the days of very expensive glucose meters, just two blood tests a day, and often urine tests as well. Everything was plotted on those sheets.

Now the diary I use has space to record what food you’ve had with a space for the insulin too, and more than one line for each part of the day, which is very helpful. After just two days of using my new book I’ve identified where the problem might be (at the moment I’m going far too low far too often) so I’m already taking steps to be slightly less trigger-happy on the insulin.

It’s a bit ‘back to basics’ but it’s just what I’ve needed, to see it down in black and white. It’s easier to make sense of it now I’ve got somewhere sensible to write it all down in.”

Bead making

As for Rebecca’s chosen field of glass bead making, which she happily describes as “playing with fire”, it was a stroke of luck on a cold day that had her visit the annual Art In Action event near Oxford where she popped in to a tent to warm up and watched someone make a glass bead using a torch. It started as a hobby, but on being made redundant in 2008, Rebecca has made it into a business and now makes and sells beads as well as teaching others the craft. “It’s literally a cottage industry,” she says, “it’s not a production line – every bead is different.”

• Rebecca has been using the
  
  Desang blood test diary
  

Name:

Bob Krause

Age:

90

On Sunday 29th May 2011 Bob Krause celebrated his 90th birthday. The amazing thing is that he’s spent 85 years of his life living with

type 1 diabetes
.

Bob is known for his unflagging determination in treating his diabetes, and mental precision to

keep his body healthy

following his diagnosis as a young boy all those years ago.

Record breaker

According to a diabetes research centre based in San Diego, Bob Krause is the first American to live with diabetes for 85 years. During his long life he has witnessed incredible evolution in the

treatment of type 1 diabetes
.

As well as a party with his wife of 56 years, Bob was awarded with a special medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center.

Not getting him down

Bob Krause’s physician, Dr. Patricia Wu, was reported in the American media as saying: “Bob has outlived the life expectation of a normal healthy person born in 1921. He knows that he has to deal with this and he sees this as a part of his life, he doesn’t let this get him down.” There is no doubt that Krause’s resilience has been a factor in his incredible longevity. As the man himself puts it: “I’m a stubborn old man. I refuse to give up.”

Diabetes is known to affect 18.8 million people in American, with as many as 7 million more living with the disease without knowing.

Type 1 diabetes is the less common condition, and affects approximately 3 million people in America.

Sadly,

life expectancy

is lower for many people with diabetes due to a range of health complications.

These include stroke,

retinopathy
, heart disease,

kidney damage

, neuropathy and amputation.

Mechanical engineering professor

Krause, who previously worked as a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Washingto, eats just enough food to power his body.

He was reported as saying:  “To keep your diabetes under control you only

eat the food you need

to before you have activities to perform. I eat to keep me alive instead of eating all the time, or for pleasure.”

Nuts and prunes for breakfast

His diet consists of nuts and prunes for breakfast, skips lunch and has salad with lean meat for supper.

Krause was

diagnosed

shortly after insulin became widely available, in 1926. His older brother died due to being diagnosed the year after.

Krause remembers the incident clearly, and his words certainly highlight just how far the treatment of diabetes has advanced.

“I watched Jackie die by starving to death. Before insulin, diabetics would just die because eating doesn’t make any difference: anything that you ate couldn’t be converted and you literally starved to death because your body couldn’t absorb anything.”

Although Krause and Wu have long worked together to maintain his health, Krause still has a piece of advice every time he leaves her office.

He apparently says: “I’ve been doing this for 80-number of years and it has gotten me this far and I’m still here, so who are you to tell me how to do this? I’ve been doing this since before you were born.” Wu reported, with a laugh.

Congratulation to Bob Krause from Diabetes.co.uk!

Name:

Mark Austin

Occupation:

Optician

Mark Austin is a 43 year old Contact Lens Optician who has been living with type 1 diabetes for 29 years.

Aged 14, Mark was displaying the classic symptoms of diabetes such as extreme thirst, fatigue and a dramatic loss of weight.

Mark carefully monitors his blood sugar levels but it wasn’t until he started using a

Contour USB blood glucose meter

that his worries over certain daily activities, such as sports, meetings and sleeping, reduced.

Running sugars high to avoid hypos

The two main areas of Mark’s life that have been affected by his diabetes are his work and sports such as his regular football games.

Working days are busy for Mark; when not

seeing patients

he is often committed to attending various meetings.

Meetings were a concern for Mark and to

prevent hypos from occurring

, he used to ensure his blood sugar levels were sufficiently high. This wasn’t an ideal solution, even in the short term, as the high blood glucose levels would affect his concentration and performance.

Hypos at night were a further worry for Mark and he would occasionally wake up sweating and shaking. The shock would often lead Mark to overcompensate for the hypo by

eating too much food

to correct his low blood sugar and would end up too high later on.

Making sense of the test results

Before Mark bought a Contour USB, he was entering his

blood sugar levels

into a spreadsheet he created himself. Whilst the spreadsheet helped Mark to pull the results together, he still found it difficult to draw useful conclusions and gain a real insight into how to tailor his lifestyle and manage his diabetes better.

The Contour USB has been especially useful for Mark as it has allowed him to learn from previous experience and adapt his regime to take these experiences into account.

During times of stress and illness, Mark has found that his

new glucose monitor

has helped him to record variations in his blood sugar over these difficult periods.

Mark likes the GlucoFacts software as it allows him to email his results to his healthcare team, which can help particularly between regular check-ups.

This means that if an issue comes up which needs attention; Mark can easily upload his latest test results and email them to his health team.

Mark’s impression of his Contour USB meter

Mark’s Contour USB meter has helped to take away a lot of stress and uncertainty he used to experience.

Whilst Mark has had diabetes for 29 years, he feels the Contour USB will also be particularly useful for someone who has been newly diagnosed and is trying to get to grips with managing their diabetes, as the meter could help to

reduce some of the stress

and worry that comes with a blood testing regime.

This section of Diabetes.co.uk presents real stories
from people with diabetes around the world. By understanding other people’s
experiences, successes and failures, it is hoped that

awareness
about living
with diabetes can be raised.

The most powerful tool in fighting diabetes is information, whether this comes from medical experts or real-life tales from those who live with the disease.

We interview a range of people with diabetes and present their real life stories. To feature your own story, please

contact us

Scot Lester

I cut down on carbs

Read More

Marcus Grip

Marcus’s story is a story of how he became free from diabetes.

Read More

Bob Krause

Bob Krause has been a type 1 diabetic for 85 years – and is still going strong.

Read More

Gillian Peace

Gillian Peace discovered she had diabetes when she came back from holiday in Thailand.

Read More

Mark Austin

Mark Austin 43 year old Contact Lens Optician who has been living with type 1 diabetes for 29 years.

Read More

Jill Wright

Jill was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 22 months of age – that’s 60 years with diabetes and counting.

Read More

Peter Shaw

Peter Shaw is a type 1 diabetic who is a keen kitesurfer who hasn’t let diabetes stand in his way.

Read More

Richard Lane

Richard Lane was one of the first people in Britain to have pancreatic islet (stem) cells from three organ donors put into his body.

Read More

Lee Calladine

Lee Calladine was diagnosed whilst eating a Chinese takeaway. Now, Lee works for the DRWF organising their events.

Read More

Dean Salisbury

Dean talks about his disbelief at receiving too few test strips and how you will never prise his pump off him.

Read More

Rebecca Weddell

Rebecca Weddell is one of the world’s leading bead makers. Diagnosed 24 years ago, Rebecca takes diabetes in her stride.

Read More

Diabetes Blogs

Keep checking back for more real-life diabetes views and
opinions. If you post about diabetes online or run a diabetes blog or web
page and would like your blog or story featured, please let us know.

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  Diabetes Blog

Read the musings of people with diabetes, real life stories and loads more on the blog.