Was wondering if anyone has any advice??
Hi, Rosie, T1 dx is always a shock, you'll likely go through a slew of emotions over the next few months: crying, anger, it's not fair etc. etc.
That's all perfectly normal, pretty much every newly dx'd T1 has gone through that, and it's good to get it out of your system, but it does wear off as time goes by and you start to see ways to deal with this "new normal".
I'd recommend getting a copy of Think Like a Pancreas by Gary Scheiner. It's on kindle. He's an endo and a T1 so he's dealt with it both personally and professionally. It's a good reference book to catch up on some on the things you might have missed when your DSN has been running you through things.
I'd also ask your docs/DSN about getting kitted out with libre. It's a small plastic disc about the size of a £2 coin which gets stuck on your arm and measures glucose levels continuously. The most frustrating thing about managing T1 with bg strips alone is that there's too much guesswork between tests and that can lead to you ending up hypo/hyper and those are messy situations to sort out. With libre, though, you can see in real time when you're dropping or rising, so can step in and take some corrective action to tail off a drop or rise. It makes a huge difference. A lot of us have "blinged" our libres to send the live readings to our phones and watches. Seeing how bg levels move around in response to food, insulin and exercise makes it a lot easier to decide on bolus dose amounts and timing.
I was dx'd at 21, a bit older than you. I thought that was it, my life was over, I was some sort of cripple. A few months later, I was back on a pair of skis in the Scottish Highlands, shooting around in small racing dinghies, cycling, have been away backpacking in Asia for 6 months.
It probably seems messy and uncertain at the moment, but rest assured, once you get some of the basic rules under your belt (for example, 1 unit of insulin tends to drop by 2 to 3 on bg meter, and 10g carbs tends to raise by 2 to 3), you can live a remarkably normal life and that includes eating normal food and going to the pub on a Friday.
You will have to think a lot more about what you eat and how you time your insulin doses for it, but that sort of stuff becomes second nature after a while.
This cartoon amuses me, you'll understand it in six months time!
Good luck!