“Do you have the good type or the bad type?”
“It’s because you ate too much sugar.”
“Oh yeah, my dog’s got diabetes.”
“Oh, I could never inject myself.”
“What if it’s a matter of life and death?
“I could inject myself.”
Are you ready?
I’m ready.
Oh this is the classic of all classics.
“Should you be eating that?”
Yes I can, pass me the chocolate biscuit.
Exactly, I’ll have 12 in fact.
Yeah!
I say, “Should be eating that?”
probably not with whatever you’re about to stuff into your mouth.
The government recommends the same guideline daily amounts for every person in the UK...so
why are we different?
I saw you eating some trans fat yesterday I didn’t say anything.
I’ve had somebody say, “Should you be eating that?”
and then they went on to say, “Because my dog is actually diabetic and we don’t give
him chocolate.”
People become nutritionists, pediatricians, know what I mean?
Consultants, diabetic gurus Seems like diabetes gives them permission
to say what they want, like we’re some kind of subject.
Yeah, it’s something to be commented on Yeah.
You can drink booze, you can eat really bad pizzas, and carby dishes and stuff but you
just got to know how to look after it when it comes to your insulin.
Yes I can!
I can!
I am!
“Do you carry needles around in your bag?”
If you said that to a diabetic, they are probably gonna say yes.
Yeah.
Otherwise I’ll be home all day and all night.
I do it like this, I go...
All ready, we carry bags as it is.
You saw my bag, it’s like Mary Poppins out there.
So my one’s got like loads of crazy colours and it’s got lots of different compartments
where I keep everything.
Exactly, I’ve got a fancy sticker on my tester...
Whereas boring Basil over here... has one supplied by the company.
But no I carry two types of needles.
I carry needles for my insulin pen injections and I carry a little cartridge of needles
for my finger pricker for my glucose monitor.
So I’ve got a reservoir to refill my pump.
Something sweet in case you go hyper.
I’ve got spare insulin to refill it if I need to when I’m out.
There’ll be a snack in case you miss a meal or you don’t have a meal
I’ve got...
Haven’t got any of this.
A pen in case my pump stops working.
- Oh that’s looks nice can I have a look at that?
My dream in life, well one of my dreams, is just to leave the house with nothing on me
“Do you have the bad type?”
What’s the good one?
Or the- -Neither
Is it the one when you’ve got too - That’s, that’s the cracker.
There’s this idea that there’s a type of diabetes you can live with just fine, you
know maybe you just got to watch what you eat a little bit and just go through life
and everything is fine and you don’t need to worry about anything.
There isn’t a type of diabetes like that You know they’re both rubbish.
Yeah they’re both crap.
Type 2 isn’t always caused by lifestyle...
No, no it’s not, no it’s not.
So while there is this kind of battleground and I’m always the first one in there trying
to explain the difference I always try to be respectful
Yeah no, yeah exactly.
It’s either you have a very restricted diet and you take tablets for insulin or you can
eat what you want and inject insulin.
It can affect your gut, It can affect your limbs and your nerves and your feet and your
legs Even down to your mental health it can affect
you.
A hundred percent affects your mental health.
I’ve had doctors and nurses say to me that Type 1 and Type 2 doesn’t matter
Yeah.
They’ll be like, “Oh you have diabetes” and I’ll be like “yeah Type 1” and they’ll
be like “Oh yeah, whatever.”
There is no “good diabetes”.
No there’s not.
Nobody’s heard of “good diabetes”, definitely not, I’d have that if it existed.
I will take the good diabetes.
“I guess you can’t get drunk then.”
Yeah, it doesn’t stop me.
No.
I mean I don’t get trashed.
I’m born on the same day as Amy Winehouse so I like a drink here or there I’d tell
ya I personally don’t for other reasons.
Yeah, but it’s got nothing to do with your diabetes
I mean It has in the sense, just cause it’s a massive faff.
Well I actually like drinking wine with a meal cause it helps stabilize my blood sugar
Does it?
Yeah, I used to use it as an excuse, “I need my daily glass of wine”
Do it carefully and always make sure you got a dextrose in your pocket
And make sure the people that you’re out with know.
Know, yeah.
And you’ve got medical alert on.
But yeah we can get drunk.
I’ve been on a date before where it’s come up in conversation and then straight
away they’re like “should you be drinking that?”
“Oh I could never inject myself” Oh my-
Yeah I hate this one because if it came to it-
-You’d have to You would
I had this one like two weeks ago “my mum could never inject herself!”.
The way the person was going on about it, you know what I had to say?
I was like you know if I didn’t inject myself I would die
It’s not a hobby Yeah, yeah
It’s not something I enjoy doing “Mum, I’m just going out to do, just to
inject.
Alright, I’ll be back later” Yeah exactly!
I’ll often be like in the staff room at work and I’ll be getting something ready
like an injection or getting ready to change my pump and they come in and be like “are
you taking drugs?” and I’ll be like “yeah I am”-
“Yeah I am actually” “ Yeah hi, here I am taking drugs, thanks
for pointing it out”- “Really openly taking drugs”
I still don’t really inject in public Neither do I
Like I do sometimes and I don’t really care what people think like I don’t really care,
but the only thing that bothers me about it, it’s not because people are gonna know I’m
diabetic, it’s people thinking it’s something else
They injections became quite natural to me quite quickly and it was like “okay yup,
you do that” but it was all the mental side of it and all the calculating before a meal
Yeah You know you have your cereal or whatever,
you’ve got to weigh it, you’ve got to weigh your cereal imagine doing that everyday
So I’ve got to work out everything I’m planning to eat in this meal and so you can’t
inject for one thing and get half way through what you said you were gonna eat and go “I’m
not hungry anymore, I’m full.”.
“Well you’ve injected that so you will eat it.”.
“How could you let this happen to you”
One of my best friends once said to me erm he said “did you eat too many sweets when
you were a kid?”
I was actually involved in a really horrible crash where I was crushed under kilos of sugar
and that’s how I actually got diabetes Most diabetes headlines are about Type 2,
are about people being obese and that’s what diabetes has been lumped in with
All the inferences that they caused it themselves, there is a lot of blame, there is so much
blame around I’ve had somebody say “oh you must be
really annoyed with your parents about that” I like to explain “you know what, no it’s
not because I’ve eaten lots of sugar or I just eat anything, it’s because it’s
in my genes” Yeah I’m allowed to be annoyed with my dad
it was hereditary so it was his fault as well being ginger.
I think it does make life harder to be honest but I also think it makes you a stronger person
Definitely makes you stronger.
To be able to deal with what we have to deal with day in day out and knowing it’s going
to go on probably for the rest of our lives.
It’s something that if we can keep going and we can deal with that then I reckon we
can deal with anything right?
Yeah, sorry.
Hi-five?
I’m just getting a bit emotional over here.