Lawrence - Interview 33- Diabetes Type 2

Age at interview: 38

Age at diagnosis: 37

Brief Outline:

Diagnosed a year ago, Lawrence takes gliclazide and losartan.

Background:

Lawrence works in the catering trade and is married with three young children. Ethnic background/Nationality - Born in Zimbabwe.

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Lawrence recommends finding out as much as possible and discussing information with the GP and diabetes nurse. He takes treatment seriously because he understands why it is necessary.

But the other thing I did was go on the internet, but I was searching in terms of topic, I didn't know any websites to go to, so I just searched by topic then in terms of, you know, diabetes and social diabetes, and sex with diabetes, and food, and looked through those and read those, and, and really while I might not have a specific book or a specific website to, to recommend, what I do recommend is just soak yourself with information, information, information. Because it helps you (a) in terms of making decisions about how you're going to conduct your life and (b) in terms of understanding the condition that you have, because if you don't understand it it'll be extremely difficult to, to get around it, life and it'd be extremely difficult to manage it, and, to comply with what the doctor tells you, because you might think the doctor's just, you know, giving you grief, but in effect he's just, you know, giving you the correct information.

 

But of course having said all of that it, it's up to you, really how you respond and how you deal with it. If you take it as a challenge and a positive tone yes but if, you can see it as a burden and you say, “Well I'm gonna adjust my life to accommodate the diabetes and hope for the worst and, you know, I've given myself five years to live and so forth.” Then you will have five years to live [laughs].

 

They went to great lengths, as I said between, between the doctor the dietician and, and the diabetes nurse, between the three of them they really gave me a thorough [laughs] update on what was going on. So I'd a lot of information then and of course, you know, whatever questions you come up with at the time, they're just a phone call away so I always used to phone them, “Oh what about this? And I've just thought of that.” So, they gave me a lot of information from the onset, it was really more of me absorbing what they were telling me. They also gave me a lot of literature, in terms of reading material, so, you know, you read for yourself the pamphlet - there's a standard pack that they give you - and you read through that and it is really very handy because it gives you all the information you want to know. And if you're not too sure you can always ask them.

 

But they gave me so much information that, you know, I was able to cope, from the beginning but it just depends. I think also how they presented it to me, helped me in that, you know, they said to me, “Look this is what you have and this is what can happen. You, you won't, you don't necessarily have to think you're going to die from it, you can live with it, you can manage it, but, you have to do a, b, c, d,” so, you know telling me that it's something I have but I can live with it and I can cope with it, straightaway gave me the hope to say, “Well okay so it's not as bad as it seems to be.”