I was on the four, four, well, yes, four to six injections a day regime with the Lantus and the NovoRapid. It was a very good system. I was, my HbA1c was 5.9. But I still had the hormone changes. I had very very fluctuating hormone levels, you know. And the insulin can't, no matter how hard you try sometimes and how, whatever you do, the insulin can't compensate for it. And because I was doing more performing, more singing and trying to get me sort of involved in more theatre, I was noticing that adrenalin in my body was shooting my sugars up through the roof. And when I was coming off stage my sugar would be through the roof. So I thought, 'Oh, well, this is just fantastic, you know. I'm living my dream but in the long term I'm going to make myself even more blind because the adrenalin level is going to get me'. 

So I spoke to the staff at my diabetes clinic, which are absolutely amazing, and they knew everything about me. And I talked to them in detail about it. And, you know, I says, 'What can I do? I can't, I've got this far, hell, I'm not giving up my dream now'. My mum, still tried to dissuade me. But, and they says, 'Well, we can try and get you on an insulin pump'. But they are not, unfortunately they're not available on the NHS at the moment. And they can, my particular clinic can only, can only sort of put so many people a year on them through the Primary Care Trust. And they basically, they basically said, 'Because you've lost so much vision at the age of 23, you're so young, and you want to maintain that vision for the rest of your life, and your job affects your, your blood sugars, we'll try and get you the funding for an insulin pump'. And they, they did. It came through. And that's been a, quite a tough ride, getting, getting it all balanced out. But it's amazing. And the first time that I did, I did a gig on stage and I sung, and I came off the stage and my sugar was 5.9. I was like, 'Yes'. Because the insulin pump had worked. I was so pleased. So that, that's how that came about.

The insulin regime I had when I was younger was more or less two injections a day at certain times. As an example I'd have to have my breakfast at 8 in the morning and I'd have to have my lunch at 1 in the afternoon, have my tea at 5 o'clock, have my snack at half 10, have a snack at half 3, have a snack at half 9 before I went to bed. And that's pretty much what my life consisted of. Obviously no sugary foods. Low-fat, low-calorie, long-term carbohydrates, very healthy things. Which was very very restricting, especially as a child. Luckily my mum had brought us up with a healthy diet anyway. So it wasn't too much of an adjustment. And I was allowed the odd chocolate bar and things if I did a hundred skips. You know, if I did a hundred skips and bring, brought my sugar level down, I was allowed a chocolate bar. So there was ways around it. But there was one particular time when I, the class went swimming, and obviously for exercise you had to boost your sugar levels up. And my teacher couldn't open my sugar box. It was stuck. So I wasn't allowed to go swimming. And I absolutely loved swimming. So I had to sit out on the side of the pool and watch all my friends playing in the pool. Which, it really did devastate me. And obviously I remember that incident because it hit me so much. So that's an example of what I had to do. And another thing that I had to do, which was adjusting my diet. You know, you couldn't just jump in the swimming pool and go swimming. You had to have sugar before you went.

It's probably, definitely the age of, of say 12 or 13, when I was in middle school, getting slightly older, becoming more aware of my figure. And then moving on to high school. And I hadn't really thought about it very much until that point. But obviously when you go to high school and you're going through adolescence, your body's starting to change and develop. You become very aware of it. Especially when there's girls looking at gorgeous pictures of women and saying, 'I want to be like them'. And, and boys are doing the same thing and they're checking you out and criticising people. And like kids do to each other, like teenagers do to each other. But obviously for me there was nothing I could do when girls around me were not eating a lot because they wanted to be thin or slim. I had to eat. And they'd sit and pick at things and I'd have to eat the full meal. With hindsight, this, I think this is, this is probably what caused my develop, eating disorder to develop. Because my life had been so focused around food it was the only thing that I could control. I became depressed because my sugar levels were starting to slip.

Then I actually spoke to my diabetes nurse and I asked her, I said, 'Is there a different insulin regime that I can go on that, that can help me with my new lifestyle as a teenager? With, basically not, so I don't have to eat at set times. So I can go out and eat later on if I want. So if I don't want to eat as much lunch, I don't have to eat as much lunch. I can eat a little bit'. She put me on a new insulin regime that allowed me to be a lot freer with my food and the times of food. And for the first time in years I discovered that I didn't have to have snacks. I could actually reduce the amount of food that I ate. I could eat, as long as I knew the carbohydrates and things, I could more or less eat what I wanted. And I guess it, in an ironic way it was a new sense of freedom. But also it's quite a dangerous thing. 

Because I was becoming so self-aware, I was able to use that to control what went into my mouth. I decided to go on a diet and lose weight.

And it just spiralled. And I almost went anorexic. But with an eating disorder it can go one way or the other. You can, you can end up wasting away to nothing or you could end up bulimic. Because you end up not being able to do it any more, and you end up bingeing because you're so hungry. Which is what I did.