Hi
@Emirp,
Congratulations, 68 years is a looong time !!!
I was diagnosed in 1966, at age 13 - 1966 is memorable as the year Australia changed to decimal currency.
My mother was concerned at how tired I was, having recently been training and performing well at athletics.
A sweet concoction called 'GI' cordial was my preferred drink at the time - galloons of it.
I was lucky that my GP was very astute and diagnosed me on the basis of having a ketone breath and sugar in my urine.
I was in hospital that afternoon - receiving injections and wondering what was going on.
The physician was another excellent doctor who explained things to me and, as I learned later, even invited my parents to his home for a meal in order to explain what diabetes was and what to expect.
Things are rather different these days in the 'bedside' manner and approach of most doctors !!
I recall having a really mean charge sister who thought that I should be able to inject myself then and there - by practising on an orange !!
My physician arranged for me to have a hypo in hospital and he only missed being there by 5 minutes !! and explained what it was so that I could recognise it in future and know what to do.
My parents being science trained were very helpful in helping me once home from hospital.
An aluminium medication tin was re-purposed as a 'billy' to boil up the glass syringes and re-useable needles (long ones)! on the electric hotplate with (new)! metal flyscreen fashioned into a carrier inside the 'billy). No skinny, thin needles back then !!
A butter dish filled with methylated spirits (metho) was where the sterilised syringe and needles were kept.
Insulin was Soluble and Isophane (clear and cloudy) - once daily at the start.
The laundry was the 'laboratory' where I tested my urine with either the 'Testape' strips or the Ames caustic soda in test tube testing kit - how I wished for the blue colour each time.!! No glucose monitors in those days - now until about 1980.
I had trouble giving myself injections, so my parents purchased a self-injector device , brand name Busher, I think, and later a better one called ? Dekker. No diabetes educators, support groups or camps back then to help !!
I was looked after medical-wise by my GP and physician until I started at medical school at age 19.
The hospital clinics were a shocker!! People with amputations, blindness - no soft approach - and some doctors would use those examples as a threat to make me do better with my diabetes control. No thought given to the variability in absorption of the old insulins, no real diet beyond counting portions. The threats were traumatic - the only saving grace was that I can look back now and say that perhaps I am lucky to have suffered only cataracts, carpal tunnel trouble and trigger fingers as complications.
What probably also helped was getting lots of exercise during teenage years when the BSLs were on a real roller-coaster as I went through growth spurts where I would have to increase my twice daily Soluble and Isophane double or more for some weeks and then quickly drop doses back as the growth spurt finished.
What I have only come to appreciate lately is that having lots of protein during that time probably meant my BSLs were less affected than if I had hoed into breakfast cereal etc.
Yes, lots of memories !!!