Like Father, Like Daughter: Gareth’s Story of Living with Type 1 Diabetes
This article was written by Gareth Collins, a type 1 diabetic living in Brisbane, Australia.
Well, I sit here being now almost halfway through my 30s, married with three beautiful girls. I am successful in being a salesperson in IT, and I support my family in a comfortable life. All in all, a happy and healthy life.
Oh, wait, that’s right – for the last 24 years, I have been managing with T1D underpinning my life.
Getting Diagnosed and Learning the Ropes
It was the second week of school holidays in July of 1990, and after waking multiple times a night for what seemed like months, drinking ridiculous amounts of liquids and losing weight drastically, my parents thought it time to take me to the doctor.
Within five minutes and waiting for a 30-second test, which I would soon realize was going to be a large part of my life, I was told I had diabetes and I should head straight to hospital as my blood sugar level was 26. I had no idea what that number meant, and it would take many days if not weeks to really understand the gravity, but I was off to hospital.
My mum was a registered nurse at the time; however, I don’t even think she had any real understanding of what this disease was going to mean to me and our family, and I could feel her fear as we made the silent 10-minute trip to the ER.
I arrived at hospital, and we were taken straight to the children’s ward and bypassed the ER. Within minutes, I was to have the first of nearly 35,000 injections (to date) and I was introduced to insulin. The stay lasted for a week, and I was taught all I needed to keep my blood sugar in range as best as possible for the rest of my life.
How Times Have Changed
I look back now and see the similarities and also the changes that have been made in both the understanding and the management of what a lot of people call a war with T1D. I have seen BSL tests go from 30 seconds to 5 seconds, I have seen ketone testing go from urine to blood tests, I have seen management where you had to eat to feed your insulin to giving insulin to cover what you eat. But the biggest change that I have seen is the move from giving myself five injections a day to having a small insulin pump on my side that adds a level of normality back into my life and my family’s life.
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