Diagnosed IDD at 8 yrs (2 stone in weight when I went into hospital). I trained & worked as a dancer (Italian Operetta Co) and because I was doing dance classes, rehearsing & performing days and evenings it was easy to keep bg down and to remain stable. No one minded if I needed to stop & eat and I was using Pork insulin. After I married I was in advertising and again it was easy to control bg as I travelled around to see businesses and when I ate etc was entirely up to me. I did spend some time in the office which initially was horrendous as we were not supposed to eat and being on 1 injection a day of quick (soluble) and slow acting ( pork insulin I had to eat every 2 hours at precise times so often had to hide away in the loo in order to quickly eat a chocolate bar. When I managed in the office it was easier to control both my diabetes and what I needed to do in order to maintain control. Then I had my 2 children and was no longer on animal insulin but diabetes control was manageable. When my children went to school I took a degree then a Post Graduate qualification in Education with Qualified Teacher Status--found most children at school often had friends who had diabetes and understood it better than most adults so if I needed to eat during lessons, because I was getting low, no one said anything!! I was a dance/ drama/ performing arts teacher and head of department then Michael Gove appeared and removed my subjects from both core & foundation curriculum so my school closed the performing arts dept down. I have since been supply teaching but have found recently (after 52 years on a variety of insulins) that BG has begun to swing, sometimes unpredictably. As a result of this I had a car accident and 3 hours after it occurred I was found to have low bg so my licence was revoked by DVLA. I can now only work at schools which I can bus, train or walk to which means I am now working a lot less than full time which is a nuisance to say the least. In spite of having IDD for many years (over 52) I have no retinopathy, kidneys are in very good working order,cholesteral is high (but only since they added HDL & LDL, in 2012, rather than taking LDL from HDL, which is what they used to do and which was when my cholesteral was normal) but unable to take statins because it causes muscle wastage in me after just a few days, which is irreversable. Blood pressure is normal too-- so no complications, I count my blessings. Frankly though I DO find diabetes control far more difficult on analogue insulins (I take novorapid & levemir 4 times a day) because of its' variability of action. Anyone else find the same?
. I come in handy now and again when a diabetic pupil needs help though they are usually very self sufficient.
