Diabetes Misunderstood

National Diabetes Week runs until July 17 and Phillip Island’s Min Beaumont shares her story of living with Type 1 Diabetes.

“I am a recipient of the Diabetes Victoria Kellion Medal for living with Diabetes for 50 years; my daughter Neelam is receiving the supporter’s award.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes by Dr Ben Weiss at Warley Hospital in 1971; I was five and had just started Newhaven Primary School. As a child Warley became my second home. 

I had my seventh birthday in Warley and was presented with a pink sugarless cake made by the lovely cooks. 

Diabetes created a strange relationship with food, enjoyment replaced with guilt; food equals a health consequence if you don’t inject insulin with it.

Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys the beta cells in the pancreas: it’s not from eating too many wagon wheels. 

Insulin is like a truck that picks up the sugar in your blood and transports it to cells to create energy to support life.

I experienced thirst, blurred vision, nausea, weight loss and fatigue as sugar floated around having no means to turn into energy. I was taken to hospital in Melbourne. 

The kids in the ward had huge Easter eggs, but none came my way. By age seven, I was injecting myself and to date I have had 90,000 shots. I had a confronting but stoic childhood. 

I want to go back and hug my five-year-old self; she was one brave little girl just getting on with it.

I was in and out of hospital, and a blood glucose meter was not invented until my teens, so control was hit and miss. There was no technology.

My parents learnt how to inject insulin into an orange and were required to boil up a glass syringe every day.

Many think you have your insulin and get on with your day, but it is not like that. 

Insulin (injected four to seven times a day) has to be balanced with your food intake, taking in to consideration your activity, mood, stress, emotions, and hormones. 

All these alter your sugar levels, so calm paced out days and controlled routine works best but this is not life.

A type 1 Diabetic makes 180 diabetic related decisions per day. There is no holiday from this, it’s with you 24/7. 

It can become overwhelming on top of normal everyday decisions. 

Mental health and burnout are very common. The aim is to keep blood sugars close to normal as a high or a low can lead to an emergency and long term complications.

Type 1 Diabetes is only 10 per cent of all types of diabetes and is diagnosed mostly in children and young adults.

All types of diabetes are serious and have the same complications; no one should feel blame or guilt for being a diabetic no matter how or why you got it. The stigma around having diabetes is ever present. 

There is a lot of anxiety around food and around being judged. Diabetes control is not something you ever get perfectly right. 

A horrendous amount of work goes into keeping within ‘normal’ range.

My daughter learnt quite young how to ring 000 when I had unconscious nocturnal hypos (low blood sugar). 

I now have a continuous glucose monitor that is blue toothed to my phone that reacts to a sensor in my abdomen with an alarm. 

This is life changing for my family and heaven for me. Control is better these days. 

Insulin pumps have replaced injections and the technology of this era helps avoid the complications associated with Diabetes and outcomes are pleasingly positive.

I have had a great 50 years, full of adventure, school, travel, employment and family, all achieved while attending to a full-time private battle that goes on in the background.

If you would like to contribute to a cure for Diabetes, visit www.diabetesvic.org.au/donate or phone Diabetes Vic on 1300 437 386.

We all know someone with Diabetes so let’s all get on board.”