Diabetes Blog Week 2012: Diabetes Hero

Sunday 05/20 Let’s end our week on a high note and blog about our “Diabetes Hero”.  It can be anyone you’d like to recognize or admire, someone you know personally or not, someone with diabetes or maybe a Type 3.  It might be a fabulous endo or CDE.  It could be a d-celebrity or role-model.  It could be another DOC member.  It’s up to you – who is your Diabetes Hero??

I posted last year about my admiration for parents of diabetic children, and my mum (and parents like her) will always be one of my diabetic heroes.

Today, however, I want to talk about another of my diabetic heroes - my lovely husband Stuart. I think it's easy to forget that diabetes affects more than just the people with it - it affects those around them as well.  In my case, as well as living with me and my diabetes, Stuart has done it while dealing with a fairly severe needle phobia.  When we first started dating, I was still on MDI, and we quickly figured out a system where I could warn him that I was about to do my injection (usually by unsubtly saying "hide!"), and he could look away. 

He was there while I went through the process of getting started on my pump.  He supported me every step of the way, even though the very idea of it freaked the hell out of him, because he knew that it was the best thing for me, and by extension, for us. 

 I've said before about how I am quite territorial about my diabetes management, and he lets me get on with my diabetes management on my own, and he doesn't tell me how to do things or judge what I'm doing.  He would never dream of telling me that I shouldn't have a piece of cake because of my diabetes.  He's listened to me rant and moan when I'm having a rough day diabetes wise, or when I've done something stupid like pull out a site.

And he has quite literally picked me up when I've fallen down.  I've only ever had two seizures in 23 years of being diabetic, and they happened about six months apart, both after Stuart and I were living together.  The first happened in a supermarket, and Stuart came to pick me up in A&E, and sat until the wee hours when I was discharged.  The second happened at home, when I went down in the kitchen (pulling a table down with me...) with Stuart in the next room. He called an ambulance, and stayed with me the entire time.  While there is nothing quite as horrible as waking up and realising that you've had a seizure, waking up with him next to me very calmly explaining what had happened and that things were going to be ok? That takes a lot of the scariness out of that scenario.  He waited in A&E with me again, and both times he took the next day off work to look after me.

He has taken me, diabetes and all, to be his wife, and there was even a line in both of our vows about how he picks me up when I fall down.  He is, and always will be, my big gorram hero. <3