Last updated: May 15
Grapes
So, as you can imagine, living in another country comes with all kinds of culture shocks. “Biscuits”, the word “quite”, “tutting”. These are all things that you learn about rather quick while living in England. There are other, more intersting tidbits, that take a particular set of circumstances in-order to come across them.
For example: Grapes and Hospitals.
If you end up in the Hospital for some reason… oh, say… after being diagnosed with Diabetes… You will soon find out that it is tradition in the UK when visiting someone in the Hospital to bring them grapes.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hospitals
Expectations matter a lot in life. We have an idea in our head as to how something should be. If reality falls outside of that expectation we often become afraid or angry. You know, “cause and effect”.
Back in mid-August I was eating an average of 3,600 calories a day and losing weight. In total I lost around 9kg (20 pounds) since January… if you know me IRL you will know that I don’t usually have that amount of weight to lose. This was a really difficult thing to wrap my head around. I have always been self concious about how thin I am. I loathed going to family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas because I know I would get comments about how thin or tall I was. No one ever seemed to comment about the size of the rounder shaped family members (or maybe I just didn’t see that). Anyhow, it was a shock to the system after spending so much effort over the years making sure that my BMI / weight is within the “healthy” range. I quickly made a GP appointment for the next week. My GP ended up recommending a broad set of blood panels.
I got a blood sample taken on Friday August 23rd. I got a call Tuesday August 27th from a different GP within the same clinic (my regular GP was out on Holiday) asking me if I could come into the clinic ASAP. “I think you have diabetes”. This was not what I was expecting.
Within the clinic the Doctor took urine and blood samples to be sure the original blood test wasn’t a mistake. My Blood Glucose measured 23mmol/L and my Ketones measured 4.0mmol/L. Some context for Ketones.
- • under 0.6mmol/L is normal
- • 0.6 to 1.5mmol/L is slightly high - test again in 2 hours
- • 1.6 to 3mmol/L means you’re at risk of DKA and should speak to your diabetes care team for advice
- • over 3mmol/L is high and means you may have DKA and should call 999 or go to A&E
As soon as the GP confirmed my numbers, they called ahead to the Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital Acute Medical Unit and instructed me to go the hospital ASAP. Thankfully I didn’t have the worst symptoms of DKA which can including vomitting and slipping into a coma. We caught this before I got to that point (often happens when kids are diagnosed).
I hope I never have to be admitted to Hospital ever again. While all the staff I interacted with were very kind and polite, being stuck in a Hospital overnight after being admitted in the evening is all kinds of weird. The Docs prescribed some basics but as you can imagine all kinds of folks end up in the Acute center. So I did not get a lot of sleep. Around 1am I was moved to the Diabetic ward which was very disorienting. My time on the ward was good, in that the staff all knew a lot about Diabetes and I could glean some info from them. While I was in the ward most of the patients were older and facing major health complications. It was quite a shock mentally to see examples of some of the worst possible outcomes of Diabetes (amputations, blindness). I was happy my final day there was day three. I was somewhat close to needing to stay another night. The final day I sat down for a long time to chat with the Diabetes Education Nurse from the Hospital’s Diabetes center before going home.
Every interaction with the Diabetes center has been great. I went to “classes” at the Diabetes center the following two weeks. This was time spent 1 on 1 with Nurses, Dieticians and Device Specialists. I kept feeling like I’m taking up too much of their time but they were very generous and have spent many hours going over questions and scenarios. I also received a Continuous Glucose Monitor, in my case I chose the Dexcome One+.
Sierra (the Mrs) has been hugely supportive through all this. We’ve cried together, laughed together. It’s all been a bit much (thankfully I’ll be starting therapy up again soon) but I’m very glad she’s been around for all of this chaos.
I’ll have my big follow-up with the Diabetes Specialist Doctor next week. I’m sure I’ll be back to talk about Diabetes more.
If you are newly diagnosed
I’ll tell you what I was told by someone I look up to.
“It’s going to be ok.”
Ultimately as a Type 1 Diabetics we have the difficult job of becoming our own Pancreas, but it’s a completely doable job. There are going to be good days and bad days but it will get easier. We can die of old age, as long as we put in some effort. The tech is getting better, the insulin is getting better. Things will continue to improve. You got this.
Here are a couple resources I found very helpful:
- • diabetes.org.uk a great site for answering your diabetes questions.
- • especially the “Your Guide to Type 1 Diabetes” booklet which can be downloaded as a free PDF.
- • jdrf.org.uk (soon to be “Breakthrough T1D”) is a non-profit that primarily focuses on T1D research but also has lots of guides and references as well.
- • especially “Straight to the Point” a book that covers all the basics you need to know. This one has been my favorite all-in-one guide so far.
- • /r/diabetes_t1 a subreddit community based around T1D
As always let me know if you have any questions or comments.