I know this blog is going to annoy some of my fellow diabetics out there but I can not hold my silence any longer.  At the moment I am having a terrible flare-up with my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a truly panic stricken episode that makes living right now incredibly difficult….you’ll have no idea how hard unless you too have experienced mental health issues. I have been a type one diabetic for over twenty-one yrs and I am fed up of reading tweets and blogs about how hard life is being a diabetic. STOP PAINTING DIABETES OUT TO BE THIS GOD AWFUL THING….THERE ARE A LOT WORSE THINGS IN LIFE TO HAVE!

Does my diabetes frustrate the hell out of me some sometimes? Of course it does and I wish I did not have it for numerous reasons.  For example, I miss not eating chocolate when I want too. The constant of going out and having to have some food on me in case of a hypoglycemic attack wears me down occasionally. When I go out on a night out I feel like Robocop due having my pockets bulging full of diabetic related stuff.  My biggest frustration is controlling my blood sugars and how the consuming the slightest thing different can alter them. For example, my GP dispiutes this but how many painkillers I take in a day effects my blood sugars.  Even just one simple paracetamol sends my blood sugars either up or down. Getting stressed also alters things.

I do not feel any bitterness towards my diabetes stopping me from drinking lots of alcohol because in my case, it is more of a sore pelvic condition that prevents me from downing a pint.  Injecting has never bothered me, yet I know it does to some other diabetics.  I equate it to just like brushing my teeth, it is just a necessary thing that I have to do daily.  It is that long since I was diagnosed that I can not really remember what life was like not having to inject myself with insulin before I ate.

Did my diabetes ever stop from going out and having a good night? Of course it did not, I was more than happy just on my three bottles of larger a night. Did it stop me going to the gym and doing vigorous exercise? No, I ate a Mars bar before I used to start and never did the exercise cause me to go hypo.  Yes I did rebel a bit with my diabetes about a year after being diagnosed but I soon saw sense after a minor scare with an abnormal eye scan I had. It scared me enough never to mess about with my diabetes ever again.

At twenty-one I wouldn’t say I was happy being a diabetic, but it did not bother me that much either.  Then my Dad died when I was aged twenty-one.  It was an horrific time in my life as you would expect. Then I spent the next two to three years worrying I might have prostate cancer.  I was in agony in my abdomen and I was in so much pain when needing to urinate every ten minutes.  In turned out I did not have prostate cancer but a prostate infection. This infection left me with swollen pelvic floor muscles and tilted pelvis. I had gone from being a gym obsessive to one that could hardly walk without it causing me pelvic pain.

My pelvic issue stopped me getting girlfriends at University. You any idea what it is like to fancy somebody and know they fancy you, but being too scared to do anything about because I knew a sexual relationship would cause me too much pelvic pain? I felt emasculated and so depressed about this aspect of my life. Doctors were useless because it was not prostate cancer so I was largely on my own. I just tried to push girls to the back of my mind because due to this illness alone kept making me so ill,  keeping up with my course was really hard. The infection kept coming back and I kept having to drop out of Uni. My diabetes was not even an issue for me, I had bigger worries.

I then got diagnosed with a hernia which caused me a lot more pain than my diabetes ever will.  I had sinus surgery about six years ago and two years ago had my gallbladder removed due to feeling ill with gallstones.  I grant you there is a link with gallstones and diabetes I have since discovered.

I finished Uni about six years ago and so finally had enough time to solely concentrate on getting my pelvic condition a lot better…post infections.  I got told my right iliopsoas muscle was inactive and badly swollen.  This gave me and still gives me great pain. It gives me this hot burning sensation all over my abdomen frequently.  This would be aided if I could take anti-inflammatory drugs but I’m unable to take these due to them stinging my ribs and making me feel all shaky and nauseous.  You any idea what it is like to have played team sports growing up like football and cricket, to then go to hardly being able to do any exercise at all at the moment?? I’ll tell you, it upsets and depresses me greatly.

I then got another body blow last year when I had an horrific episode with cellulitis on my legs. Cellulitis is a nasty red rash that burns your skin.  I ended up in hospital and then the doctors did not like the look of my legs, they had been swollen for about six months up to that point.  A condition called lymphoedema was the probable diagnosis. I was devastated at this because I had enough health issues that I was battling with as it was. It is a lymph gland drainage problem which causes swelling to appear in an effected arm or leg. You can not cure it but you can manage it………..another health problem for life. This explains why I have been feeling so acidic due to of all of the built up fluid. Then I got told I did not have it after all by a Vascular Doc. Only for the next one I saw to tell me I did have it and the last doc was incorrect. I now await a second opinion to confirm whether I  have lymphoedema or not…WHAT A HEADACHE AND FIASCO.

Straight after Uni whilst trying to get to the bottom of this pelvic thing, I had a scan on my old hernia area and it came back that I had a serious lower back issue called spondylolisthesis.  This means I have a slipped vertebrate for LIFE….oh and I had nerve compression with it thus explaining the sciatica all the way down my left leg.  Again another thing giving me pain, another thing to have a bigger impact on my life than my diabetes.

I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder around the age of seventeen.  Like I said at the beginning of this blog, you will have no idea on the true devastating destructive nature of a mental health illness unless you, a family member, or a friend has suffered from one. My OCD has always been there in the background throughout my life but currently it is terrible.  It feels like I am currently  a prisoner to my obsessive irrational thoughts.  I feel suffocated by my contaminated feelings, it feels like I am struggling to breathe. Away from the OCD I am this happy-go-lucky guy and a wonderful sense of humour and I hate this awful illness for ruining my life at present.  I have only recently started talking about my mental health demons because I am embarrassed about being like this. I worry what girls I like will think.  Life feels like a living hell living like this.

Diabetes has never made me cry but all these other health issues have.  My diabetes has never made me feel like a helpless victim but they all have. I guess unfairly perhaps, I struggle to see why other diabetics feel the need to constantly write and chat about being a diabetic because ‘IT’S JUST DIABETES’ in my view compared to all my other struggles. If you maintain good blood sugar control and consume the right things, then it should not cause you too many problems.  If you drink lots of alcohol and have lots of sugar and salt in your diet then I have no sympathy if you then develop high blood pressure and heart disease related issues.

I remember watching X-Factor years ago and there was this contestant called Tiger Lily on it who was a diabetic.  I hated how she and the show depicted this illness of mine. It was all too much of a sob-story as usual and how what a trooper she was for doing what she was doing with diabetes. IT’S ONLY DIABETES I THOUGHT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.  I wanted a more positive representation my illness. Take our greatest Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave who sufferers with this illness, not once I have I ever read him making a big deal of him being a diabetic. This also applies to the ex-Pakistan cricket great Wasim Akram.  I never even knew he was a diabetic until reading it once.  I had sooooooo much admiration for him doing the things he achieved on the cricket field whilst being a diabetic.

I feel like I am waffling so need to end this blog soon and by the end of this blog I could have ended up contradicting myself a bit.  I know more than most how nice and supportive it is to talk to fellow sufferers of an illness.  I can remember the first time I met another diabetic like me and it was a girl one night whilst living away at Uni.  It was so nice to chat to her because I felt like only she could understand what it was like to have diabetes.  That said, as I have got older my diabetes has kind of got just gone into the background whilst the other illnesses have kicked off.  I do not feel the need the need to chat constantly about my diabetes because it does not ruin my life like my other issues do.  I guess I should not moan at other peoples need to chat about diabetes but I guess I feel envy towards them.  I think inside ‘I WISH THAT WAS ALL I HAD TO WORRY ABOUT.’

I long for my old life when all I had to worry about was my diabetes. Last night I told a fellow diabetic about me doing this blog and how it might really annoy some other diabetics.  She understood and got where I was coming from.  She said her diabetes is just like second nature to her now. It is more of an annoyance than a big deal, if you look after it then you should not have too many problems…………..I COULD NOT HAVE AGREED WITH HER MORE!