Hello...My name is Tom and I'm an insulin addict....

Whoops, took myself to the wrong place there I think!
Seriously though I love this wonderous stuff that I am obliged to pump into my system at regular intervals everyday. I haven't heard of a free drug dependency with none of the nasty side effects and such regular health checks...That said I do rather envy smackheads for being so damnably thin! If memory serves me, the first use of insulin to treat Diabetes Mellitus (sounds posh doesn't it!) was eighty eight years ago. Two gentlemen by the names of Banting and Best walked into a ward in a Canadian hospital and administered the first insulin to be extracted from animal pancreases to comatose children who otherwise would have been killed by that friend of us diabetics which goes by the name Diabetic Ketoacidosis or DKA for short. I guess the reason I'm writing about this is because as part of a series of lectures I've had for a Biochemistry module we were obliged to learn about ketone formation; more precisely the circumstances under which they form. In essence they are formed either in the absence of insulin or when starving due to a variety of factors. I suppose what I'm driving at is that even highly educated university lecturers with doctorates to their names are ignorant of the full truth that diabetics are obliged to live with. Now, although I didn't turn up to the aforementioned lecture I did read the notes and revise for the test that I sat on Wednesday. What the lecturer failed to acknowledge is that ketosis occurs in diabetics and it can easily morph into DKA and a trip to A&E where the medics, God forbid, may not know of it. Five years at medical school and you'd sort of expect them to be able to suss out what's playing up ("Doc, my blood pH is going down and my breath smells of pear drops, that's normal isn't it?")
Time to cut to the chase I feel. This is but one example of the ignorance that diabetics such as myself have to deal with on a day to day basis. Sometimes I correct them because I can be bothered, however, most of the time I just simply cannot be bothered to do that because I know that I may aswell be p*ssing into the wind on occaisions. I wonder how may people get like this. Ignorance might well be a never ending path for us diabetics to walk down come rain or shine but some of us get further than others. I'd like to think I'm sort of getting there, eventually that is. Then again ignorance can be compaired to knowledge which is the ever expanding horizon and learning which is the endless march towards it. All in all, I suppose that there are some who will when they stand corrected will bear that in mind. That said, there are sadly those that will remain unchanged no matter what we tell them.
Talking of those induviduals, my bloody know it all aunt starting grilling me at a family get together over the festive season. Normally I'm happy to answer questions about my diabetes but that night something about her was just rubbing my up the wrong way completely. She spotted that I'd jabbed using two different pens at different points in the evening. What I suppose she wanted to know was rather specific. That said, she didn't ask what my two pens had in them and what the difference between the contents of those pens was, all she asked was why I had two pens. Nothing else. My Mum saved me some embarassment by getting me to explain what the difference was. I recall we then went on to talk about insulin pumps and my then anger at my care team for not telling me sooner that because of my choice of pump I would have to wait until April to start on it, not as I then believed January. I think my little sister boldly tried to defend my team, lovely people though they are, they could have damn well told me. I shouldn't have had to ask for that information myself. As I recall that bloody know it all aunt backed out (very wisely in my opinion, seeing as I wasn't really in the mood to tolerate any kind of sh*t from her) of joining in the question and answer session on diabetes chaired by yours truly.

I think that's all of it out of my system for the evening...Maybe...