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Jonny In better control with his pump since 2004
Newly diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 15,
and I got very sick.
I remember going to a movie with my friends,
and I went to the bathroom about 8 times.
I think I threw up three times,
and eventually my mom said something is wrong.
In reacting to the diagnosis,
I think the first thing for anybody is to want to understand what it is,
and that's very much what it was for me.
I was deathly afraid of needles when I was a kid,
so that part of the diagnosis
was a little bit scary.
And for the rest, I just wanted to feel better,
and understand what it was that I was dealing with.
I don't think I could wish for a better family reaction,
to the diagnosis of Type-1 diabetes.
My parents are very calm and collected people,
and to them it was all about ok, what do we do now?
How do we make this better,
how do we get healthy and then move on?
I suppose when I was diagnosed,
I wanted to know,
simply what it would take for me,
to go back to the life that I had.
Go back to a normal life.
When I started on an insulin pump
seven or eight years ago,
it was less common.
My parents, my grandparents had heard about it
and were keen on it
because it was easier,
I would remember to take it with me everywhere.
If I wanted to cover just a small snack,
it was so much easier to push a button
than to pull out a syring and take an injection.
Nice with sports as well.
If you decide that you want to do something active,
you know, mid way through the afternoon when you weren't expecting to,
that you can just cut back your basal
as opposed to having that insulin already in your body
that was going to take its course.
Being on the pump, with what I do,
my schedule is by no means fixed.
So some days I am lecturing, some days I am studying,
some days I am teaching, some days I am travelling.
I travel a lot for conferences and work.
I would say that it's very important to
adopt a pro-active mindset
when it comes to Type-1 diabetes.
The amount of effort that you put into learning about the condition,
translates directly to how good your control will be,
how good your lifestyle will be,
and it makes it less work in the long run as well.
So, I think that just learning as much as you can
and staying positive about it, is the way to go.
There are so many things you can learn about at diagnosis,
including insulin pumps,
that will help you live well and take control.
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