Interview Section : YouthHealthtalk

Interview 06

Age at Interview: 20

Sex: Female

Age at Diagnosis: 3

Background: She lives at home with her parents and siblings. She is studying to be a nurse care assistant. She has a lot of experience with managing diabetes while travelling/living abroad.

Brief outline:Her current regime consists of analogue long-acting insulin; Lantus in the mornings and short-acting insulin injections of NovoRapid three times a day at mealtimes. Says that she is fine with taking her insulin but, as a teenager, she did mind the blood sugar tests and seldom did them. She has developed diabetes-related complications and says that these were a 'wake up' call to take control of her diabetes.

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Her skin and eyes have been affected by high blood glucose level. Says that these were wake up calls and her control has significantly improved.
Print I got celiac a couple of years ago and I also have like a skin condition which they said is, they call it scleroderma diabeticorum. So it's, it basically means I get thickening of the skin. And they said it's because of, you know, when your blood sugars are really high. And also I had they found something, some blood vessels leaking or something in my eyes. So all these things are something like a wake up, you know. Wake up call that you need to, you know. You need to take care of yourself. Your health is very important. You need to be healthy and look after yourself. So all these things are suddenly coming to me and I got diagnosed with this and that and that. So that was kind of, ok I have to do something now. What was your attitude before? I want to understand that bit when you were not taking good care of yourself? My attitude was. It's like me, I was walking and my diabetes was coming behind me. It was like I wasn't pushing it away. I didn't think, 'Oh I don't want it, go away'. I didn't mind if it was there but I'm not taking care of it. You want to come with, come but I'm not taking care of it. You know. Because like I didn't mind it was there. I didn't ever have like, 'Oh why me? or 'I hate this,' you know. It was never like that. If, if I have it fine but you. I'm not going to look after it. I'm not going to take care of it, you know. If it wants to be there I'll do my insulin and I'll do basics to survive, you know but no extra care, not extra, you know. But now it's kind of like I want to make my diabetes, you know, like here like you know, like come together so that I know what I'm doing and it becomes like part of me, you know. I want it to be that I'm more in charge and I. It's not something that I just do my insulin. I forget I have diabetes for the whole day [laugh]. I think so, I don't know. I can't really think about what the reasons why I didn't, you know. I just, I felt. I didn't feel it was important enough. It wasn't important enough to me. It doesn't, then a couple of years ago it didn't matter if I did my insulin or I did no insulin. I didn't care if I felt bad or I felt good. I didn't, you know it wasn't important. I didn't feel like it's important to have good control and to eat well and to be healthy. Wasn't important to me.

full list of topics

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The diabetes care team :

Diabetes control :

Relationships and lifestyles :

Living with it :

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