I have shared a lot about my running experiences but very little about my experience with diabetes. I do not have diabetes. Hopefully, I will never get it, but some members of my family do. They live normal, happy lives and are very rarely hindered by the disease (or so I am led to believe). Even being so close to the disease, I cannot fathom how it feels for them to have to live with the disease. What seems, from the outside, an easy ritual of injecting insulin daily is something I would never wish to endure, and something I would never wish on anyone. Yet, both my brother and my mother go through this every day. This is something I see as a close relative but something not many others see. From all outside viewpoints, they both live normal lives.
I cannot remember when I knew that my mother had diabetes. I cannot remember if I was ever "told". Certainly I don't remember being sat down and told about the disease. Just as she learnt to live with it, I never questioned it.
Hypoglycemic attacks can be very common for those suffering from diabetes. They occur as a result of low blood sugar. Throughout my life, there have been a number of times when my mother or my brother have suffered an attack due to very low blood sugar and myself or another family member have had to help restore the blood sugar to a normal level. This can be a very scary experience as the attack results in a kind of delirious state that makes it hard to communicate with the person and also difficult to cooperate with in order to restore the blood sugar to a normal level. At times, I feel frustrated with my brother when he has a hypoglycemic attack. I often blame him for not being careful with his diet and eating, but sometimes it is easy to forget that he has an invisible illness that was not brought on by anything in particular. It just happened, and he has had to deal with it, and I can imagine if I had had Type-1 diabetes, it would not be easy for me to deal with.
The first memory I have of witnessing a hypoglycemic attack was when I was 11. I was acting in a musical play, Oliver, at a stage show group somewhere I can barely remember. I made some new friends there and I was very excited to be part of the production. My mother, very patiently, drove me 30 minutes to the rehearsal every night. She was very encouraging. One night, as we were leaving, she asked me if I could pop to the bar (I guess we were rehearsing in a social club type place) and get some chocolate peanuts. I thought the request very strange indeed. They did not have any. I thought no more of it.
Shortly after, on the drive home, my mum started to act "weird". She was swerving while she was driving and acting, well...drunk. For a boy with no experience of drink driving or hypoglycemia, I was terrified. I had no idea what was going on. It continued for a while down some small streets before the busier roads. She would drive a bit, and stop. One time when she did stop, I ran out of the car and knocked on the door of one of the houses of the street. The old woman reluctantly let me use her phone (remember this was before mobile phones!) to call the police - why I called the police I do not know, I think perhaps my dad had taken my brothers to play football and I had no idea who else to call.
To cut a short story even shorter, the police arrived, kindly took us home, and were very understanding. The old woman irritably asked why of all doors I had knocked on hers and I politely informed her it was because she had been peeking through the curtains (presumably to see why a car had been stopping and starting outside) so I knew there was someone in. Though eternally grateful for her help, perhaps it taught her to be less nosy in the future.
From then on, I had a much better understanding of diabetes the disease, and my mum, the diabetes sufferer.
The point of this is that diabetes is an invisible illness. Nobody can see what the sufferers go through behind closed doors. There are no obvious symptoms from the every day observer. If you suffer from diabetes, talk about it. There is no stigma associated to having a disease. It is not your fault. If you have another illness, do not be afraid to share what it is you must endure.
Diabetes is not the only "invisible illness". For a much more eloquent take on what it means to be the sufferer of a disease that does not physically manifest itself, check out this incredible blog post:
No comments:
Post a Comment