Diabetes type 1 (young people)

And what about doing your blood sugar tests? How often do you do them?

Now I do them quite a lot. I play rugby and it's quite, obviously quite a violent and active sport [laugh] so you use up serious amounts of sugar in very short periods of time. So like then if I've got a match or if I've got training or fitness session I'll do quite a lot of blood tests. I mean if I'm really not feeling well it could be as much as eight in a day or something but not regularly. 

Have you noticed that sport helps?

I find sport doesn't help. I find it very frustrating because sport's great. It's excellent for you. It's all the long-term benefits are great and I feel better, you know, about myself and healthy if I'm doing sport. But it makes diabetes really [laugh] hard to manage for me. And I talked to my doctors about it. Well he said well partly it's the sports that I choose to do. If you do something like say rowing or jogging or something that's much more steady, I mean, you might be exhausted but it's a constant then it's easier. But because my favourite sport's rugby you might have. You go to a training session and you might be doing something quite stationary but you don't know what you're going to be doing so you know, sometimes coaches can tell you but sometimes they can't. And a match, you might get injured and then, you know, you've had enough sugar to play for eighty minutes and suddenly you've only played for ten or something. Things like that just happen and you can't really do much about it. And I think, I mean I've had so many different types of advice about doing sport. 

My consultant says I should take a can of sugary drink. I also play squash and he plays squash. And he says. Oh well he's got Type II diabetes. He takes a can of sugary drink and will sip, you know, maybe a third of it before and then a third of it during and then if he needs it a third of it after. Now if I have sugary drinks I get headaches because it's so sugary that like your body's just like whoow or mine is. And I wouldn't need that much sugar and I wouldn't want to have that much sugar to then go and run around. It seems to negate the concept of being healthy and doing something sporty. 

So I sort of said this to my dietician. He said well yeah, she could see what he meant but you know maybe try having less insulin before you do sport. And because I'm on four injections a day I can do that. So that's what I do now which works best I find. It depends when because like if I've got training from 7 to 9 and I can't eat dinner until afterwards if I don't have so much insulin at lunch I'm then going to be high all afternoon which obviously isn't what you want. By high I don't mean like through the roof but higher than you choose to be. So depends what time of day but often I'll do sport after dinner so have less insulin with dinner which works really well because you don't have to have loads of sweet. You know, I'll probably still have a chewy bar, not chewy, a sweet before the sport just to make sure I've got enough sugar but I don't need to have loads of stuff around which is good. 

But then my consultant also recommends sports that aren't quite so crazy but everyone, but everyone, but everyone completely supports the fact that I want to play what I want to play. And enjoy life so yeah.

So you are doing what you want but you have to work harder?

Yeah I mean that's how diabetes is for everything. You know you, there's very few things that you couldn't do because of diabetes but you just have to plan more and think more about what you're doing. but I absolutely, cate

And your levels, how do they read when you go to hospital?

It was quite high for a long time, it was in double figures but in my last appointment it was, it's coming down and it's kind, under ten now. But it's still quite high but monthly it's sort of coming down, bit by bit. I think I am doing something right [laughs].

I'm still using a diary because they say if there's any 'key events' that are going round like birthday party or something that could've happened to result in a higher or low blood sugar then I should right that down as well, so it'll be, it'll be helpful when I go to clinic to try and work out what insulin amount to do.

I mean like birthday parties, or big celebrations, or exam's stress, or periods. Do any of these sort of particular events affect your readings?

I think exams affect me most of all, I tend to go quite low during the exam period, maybe because I'm working a lot late into the night as well. But I think birthdays and parties, I've got the hang of knowing where my limits are and what to eat and, giving extra units as well. So I think that's okay it's just sort of exams and stress at the moment, especially with like GCSEs and everything happening. It, and my blood sugars tend to go quite low.

So what do you do on those occasions?

I was told to just reduce what insulin I'm taking, then maybe do a few more blood sugar monitors in between, to check that everything's okay and not too low. So I might eat a little bit extra before bed because that's usually when I go low, during the night.

Their advice was to lower my insulin, and do a few more readings to, to see what's happening and then according to that I can adjust my levels in insulin.