health - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Fourth Anniversary of My Daughter’s Type 1 Diabetes

Posted on May 9, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Laura Young at Puxton Park — My little bunny

Tomorrow my daughter’s diabetes will be four years old.

13 days before Laura’s fourth birthday, on 10th May 2007, I took her to the doctor’s, thinking she had a minor infection. My worst fear was that we’d come away with a course of antibiotics. I wasn’t looking forward to having to make her take a course of tablets. If only we’d got off that lightly!

Instead, we were immediately admitted to hospital as an emergency. The diagnosis: Type 1 diabetes.

“Are you in a fit state to drive?” said the GP as I sobbed silently behind Laura’s back. “If not, I’ll call an ambulance and we’ll blue-light you there.”

Neither of us was being over-dramatic. Without treatment, Laura could have become critically ill within hours – and dead before she could turn 5.

Type 1 or Juvenile Diabetes can strike at any age. My husband Gordon was diagnosed in his 40s. It strikes at random and without cause. It’s not lifestyle related. It’s no-one’s fault.

It’s a death sentence if you don’t take your insulin. And even if you do, it’s a life sentence, because you have to keep taking insulin, every day, for the rest of your life.

Unfortunately, you can’t take insulin as a tablet – it gets broken down by the digestive system before it can get into your blood. So you have to have it administered by injection (typically 4 jabs a day) or via a pump that is permanently attached to you via a canula, 24/7. And you need many blood tests every day, pricking your finger to get a sample, to check that your blood sugar doesn’t go too low (causing horrible short-term hypos) or too high (risking nastly long-term complications). It’s no fun at any age.

We’re lucky: we live in a country with a National Health Service and so Laura and Gordon are kept alive. In many developing countries, diabetes is still be a death sentence.

But there is hope: active research programmes run by the JDRF and other international organisations are on the verge of finding better ways of managing diabetes. They seek easier means of delivering insulin, less invasive ways of monitoring blood sugar, therapies to reduce the long-term health risks. One day, with enough funding, they may be able to prevent and even cure it.

On Sunday 15th May, 8 days before my daughter turns 8, I will be running the Bristol 10K race, raising money for research into a cure. £60 will pay for one hour’s laboratory research by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I’m hoping to raise enough to pay for a whole day’s research: £480.

With enough funds, the day will eventually dawn when Juvenile Diabetes is cured. Please help me hasten the advent of that day. Click here to donate whatever you can spare. No amount is too small. Thank you.

Family, Type 1 diabetes

Run, Rabbit, Run

Posted on January 24, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Year of the Metal Rabbit — Image by OnTask via Flickr

January 1^st was a rotten time to make New Year Resolutions. The excitement of Christmas was over, the decorations were losing their charm, and the mornings and evenings seemed darker than ever. Relentless advertising for the post-Christmas sales rubbed in the fact that it was an awfully long time till payday. It’s no wonder that January 24^th was officially designated the most depressing day of the year. This January had only two highlights for me: the opportunity to write cheques dated 1/1/11 or 11/1/11 and, a week later, my birthday – though, goodness knows, the novelty of birthdays wore off for me a very long time ago. So this year I decided to be realistic about New Year’s Resolutions: I resolved not to make any.

But then, a few weeks into the New Year, something wonderful happened: I looked up into the sky at 5pm and realised it was not entirely dark. A tiny tinge of blue was still hovering behind the impending night sky, a promise of the spring to come. It was enough to make my personal sap begin to rise. Then I spotted in my diary the fact that we’re on the brink of Chinese New Year. We’re entering the Year of the Rabbit. It wasn’t too late to make those New Year Resolutions after all! Before I knew it, I found myself signing up to run the Bristol 10K. A leaner, faster, fitter new me is just around the corner of 2011…

But it won’t only be me that benefits. I’ll be fundraising for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Every £60 I raise will pay for an hour of research to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. This horrible disease has blighted the life of my husband and my small daughter, through no fault of their own. (Type 1 diabetes is not related to lifestyle choices). 100 years ago, their diagnosis would have been shortly followed by their death. Decades of research has made it possible to live with diabetes, provided you submit to constant and costly medical intervention, including multiple daily injections or the use of an infusion pump 24/7, plus half a dozen or more blood tests every single day. The next ambition of researchers is to make it possible for Gordon and Laura and millions like them to live without it. At present, there is no cure.

So, with my resolve strengthening as the daylight hours are lengthening, I’ve signed on the dotted line for the 10K charity run. I just wish I had a Chinese bank account. Because then, when I write the deposit cheque, I could take enormous pleasure in dating it for the first day of the Chinese New Year: Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits / Rabbit.

(This post was originally written for the February edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News.)

Uncategorized

A Life Less Resolute

Posted on January 1, 2011March 9, 2013 by Debbie Young

“2011 will be the year in which I ….”

Can you complete that sentence yet? Chances are, you can neatly slot in an answer inspired by your New Year’s resolutions.

Not me. It’s not that I don’t have ideas for resolutions. I’m certainly eligible for all the usual suspects: eat less, drink less alcohol, go to bed earlier, exercise more. But last year I didn’t actively make any resolutions, yet 2010 turned out to be one of the best years of my life. It’s a formula I’m happy to repeat.

How did it happen? Well, a radical resolution actually came at me from out of the blue, several days into the new year. It was as sudden and unplanned as Newton’s apple falling on his head and, in my small sphere, about as revolutionary. I was in the first meeting of the year with my boss when I suddenly heard myself calmly tendering my resignation. It was unprovoked by her: we hadn’t had a row or a punch-up. But in a light-bulb moment, I suddenly realised what I really wanted the new year to bring: a better and less stressful work-life balance. Amidst the sturm and drang of the Christmas break, spent caring for a very poorly daughter, this idea must have been churning away in my subconscious, but I simply hadn’t noticed. I’m not sure which of us was the most surprised at my resignation – me or my boss. But both of us recognised, several months down the line, that I was a happier, healthier person for this impulsive decision, and I’ve not had a single regret since.

So this year, I’m going to take the same approach. Though I love the new beginnings and the promise that a new calendar brings, I don’t think New Year’s Day is the best time to make resolutions. In any case, for most people in the UK, the word “RESOLVE” is inextricably associated with the commercial hangover cure of the same name – and probably quite a lot of them have consumed it today. This doesn’t exactly create the most positive vibes. Far better to let the freshness of the new year permeate the subconscious and see what surfaces at its leisure.

So watch this space. Anything could happen in the next 365 days…

Happy New Year!

Personal life, Travel, Writing

Taking To My Bed

Posted on October 1, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Marcel Proust, 44 rue Hamelin — Image by photopictus via Flickr

It’s a hangover from childhood that I find it so difficult to sleep in the daytime. The youngest of three children, I had the earliest bedtime in the family. Lying in bed on a summer’s evening with sunlight streaming in through the curtains, I felt about as likely to fly as to go to sleep.

Even now, I don’t like going to bed in the summer – though every time my soft memory-foam pillow yields beneath my head, I wonder why I still resist. But as the evenings draw in, I change my tune. As darkness falls earlier in the evening, I begin to feel a primeval urge to hibernate. And as I light the woodburning stove in the sitting room this evening, it occurs to me that bed would be a much better alternative to winter heating. We could just bundle up in the blankets and sleep till Spring. The accompanying lengthy fast would also ensure that our summer clothes would fit the following year. However, with a small daughter’s busy social calendar to accommodate, I’m hardly likely to pull this plan off. It’s hard enough getting her to school on time on winter mornings as it is.

However, all is not lost: I’m now onto a new excuse for winter lethargy. I’ve discovered that some of the world’s finest writers do (or did) their best work in bed. Former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo has even built a special bed specifically for his writing. (Ink stains on the sheets led to his day-time eviction from the marital bed.) His literary hero, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island (as if anyone who’s ever been in the Beaufort needs to be told that), wrote books in his tropical bed in Samoa. Marcel Proust never left his bedroom when writing one of the last century’s most celebrated (and longest) novels (though as his was a sick-bed, this is an example I’m less keen to emulate). A cheerier role model can be found in Mark Twain. No wonder he always seemed so chirpy. Edith Wharton, Collette, James Joyce – the list goes on.

So this winter, I think I’ll be saving on my heating bills – and who knows, my new alternative approach might just fuel a masterpiece.

(This post was originally published in Hawkesbury Parish News, October 2010.)

Personal life, Writing

Always Someone Worse Off Than Me

Posted on August 16, 2010July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

As often happens, a routine hospital check-up kickstarts my “pull-yourself-together” mantra that there’s always someone worse off than me. But this time the trigger is a little different.

Striding energetically to the Orthopaedic X-ray department, overtaking patients on trolleys and in wheelchairs, I feel almost fraudulent for being there, although I’m only obeying my rheumatologist’s instructions.

Queuing at the department’s reception desk, I scan the waiting room to assess how long it will be before it’s my turn to be seen. I do a double-take when I spot a pair of uniformed policeman in bullet-proof jackets, sitting opposite each other and trying to look inconspicuous in the far corner of the room. Once booked in for my x-ray, I casually sidle over and take a seat a few feet away from them, gaining a front row view of whatever proceedings they are there to perform. I’m hoping the radiographer won’t call me in any time soon.

After a few moments of pretending to read a magazine, my curiosity is rewarded. A slender young man with a Caribbean accent, his arm in a sling, returns from the x-ray room and heads for Law Corner.

“It’s ok, it’s not broken,” he assures the policemen, as if that might have been their biggest worry. He looks away, as if he thinks he’s dismissed them. The younger policeman nods assent.

“Good, well, we just wanted to make sure you’re ok. And that you don’t want to press charges against your attacker.”

“No, I hit him back and he ran off, so we’ll call it quits. Let’s leave it there.”

But the young policeman doesn’t leave it there.

“And now my colleague has something he’d like to say to you.”

He nods across the aisle expectantly.

“I have to tell you that we are here today to arrest you on suspicion of possession of cannabis,” begins the colleague, and segues smoothly into the standard legal warning so familiar from TV.

Wow, a real life “nice cop, nasty cop” routine, I think gleefully. I don’t know whether everyone else n the room is hanging on their every word quite as shamelessly as I am, but I’m too transfixed to care.

Sling man is looking incredulous.

“Cannabis? You mean weed? A spliff? Does that count as cannabis?”

PC Nasty’s expression makes it clear that yes, it very much does count as cannabis.

“But when?” says the disbelieving sling man.

I bite my lip to curb a smile. Don’t tell me there’s a choice of occasions!

“Further evidence has come to light following your arrest and release in March this year,” asserts PC Nasty.

“No, you’re having me on! This is a wind-up! Someone else must have given you my name.”

“That person also gave us your correct birthday, full postal address and other personal details,” is the stern retort.

Sling man’s tense shoulders drop and he sits back.

“Oh, that will be my brother,” he asserts confidently.

“We took the person’s fingerprints, so when we get you down to the station we can take yours too and see if they match,” chips in PC Nice.

Sling man looks down at his arm as if wondering whether last night’s fight will have broken his fingerprints. A sudden thought apparently floods him with relief.

“March, you said? March 2010? No, it can’t have been me. I haven’t been arrested this year.”

“Deborah Young, please,” comes an untimely voice from reception. Reluctantly I gather my things and head off for today’s dose of radium.

But there’s still a spring in my step as twenty minutes later I stroll back to my car. Yet again, a hospital trip has shown incontrovertibly that there’s always someone worse off than me.