All i remember 8 years ago mum taking me to the doctor as she thought I still had the flu. Had the classic warning signs of diabetes, constant urination , loss of weight (12 kgs), constantly eating, wanting to sleep all the time.
So on that Saturday mum thought she would take me the doctors and get me checked over.
I remember the doctor saying " don't worry she's fine and we will do a blood test just to be safe"
Sent me for that blood test and it turns out that i had diabetes.
Had received a call on the answering machine as we were out for the night saying "she has diabetes and you need to take her to the hospital for treatment."
Try telling a 12 year that she has diabetes and will be on injections for the rest of her life. All i did was cry for 3/4 of hour.
Mum reluctantly took me to the hospital for treatment. It was an intense 5 days learning how to inject and how diabetes affects the body , sick day rules etc. My thought as we left the hospital was " I have to live with this , so I better take control of this."
Not a smart thing to do , giving a 12 year old all that responsibility isn't a really a good thing.
I started to rebel at the age of 14 . I had enough and felt that I wasn't getting enough attention.
So what did I do ? Started causing myself hypos left right and centre which caused me to go into a hypo coma. Apparently I was in the coma for 72 hours . The doctors had said to mum that if I had come out of the coma I would be in a vegetated state for the rest of my life.
I defided all odds and came through.
Years went on and things were good. Have the odd admission here and there but nothing serious.
Age 16 got my first insulin pump . Made things really easy.
Age 17 we had gone to the eastern states and turned out that the day we landed in Melbourne I was admitted to hospital as I had extremely high levels. Released the day after. Spent 5 days on Dunk Island and turns out that I picked. We make our way back to the Gold Coast and the night before we left I was admitted to hospital with extremely high levels. Spent the night in hospital then returned back to Perth. Spent the following week in bed recovering.
6 months later I was admitted to hospital once again with a severe infection. It had turned out that I had contracted MRSA whilst I was in the Melbourne hospitals. I was put into isolation whilst I spent 6 days in hospital getting over the DKA.
Things started to pick up once again.
Fast forward to 19 years of age. Three days before christmas I had my wisdom teeth taken out as they were infected. The following month I fell down a rock climbing wall and hurt my knee which required an operation to clear out the damage I had done.
My thought at the time was "why me , what have I done wrong?
There has got to be a lesson in all of this ".
That lesson was to slow down as I was working 6 days a week and training in the gym 6 days a week.
I decided to sit on the couch for 2 weeks and do nothing. Whilst I sat on the couch my knee had started to recover. The day of 3 weeks after my operation I discovered that I had gone backwards, I couldn't do anything. Turned out that the nerve in my knee had been cut.
I couldn't believe that things could get any worse. I had a further operation on my knee to repair the damage to my nerve . Things started looking up, after life had told me to slow down things started to come good. Whilst my body was recovering my blood glucose levels got better.
Months went on. Then 6 weeks ago they discovered that I had a stress fracture in my knee. They thought that the diabetes was a contributing factor to it all. Had injections done into it which help the fracture, which in effect caused diabetic neuropathic pain in my stomach. How much better could this get?
Was diagnosed with epilepsy out of the blue.
Spent 3 weeks in hospitals after all of this as I catch the flu from being out of hospital.
But this time that flu has caused me to go into a hyper coma.
After 48 hours I finally came to. I was on a drip and when they attempted to pull me off and put me onto an insulin pump, that didn't work.
A further 5 goes to pull me of the drip. When I was off the drip, I would go into high blood sugar levels. So it started me thinking " why was I given diabetes out of everyone I knew - why me ?"
Then it came to me " it is believed by many people that God believed we are strong enough to deal with it so I give you that disease".
Over the last 8 months, I have come to believe that you are given small hurdles in life and if you can rise above those hurdles you are a better person for that .
I alway say "what ever in life that doesn't kill you makes you stronger".
After the things I have been through, I finally figured out " Don't worry about the little things in life that happen - focus on the larger things that happen, cause those things are going to affect you more in life than the small things.
"Live life like there's no tomorrow as you may only live to see the rest of today".....
Amy
