It's A Viscous Circle...

Hi. My name is Kate. And this week, I can’t stand jelly babies.

At the age of 11, I was diagnosed with Type One. This was also the same year I started at a new school – new teachers, new lessons, and a new long-term illness.

Admittedly, I don’t remember many of the details of my diagnosis. However, I do remember taking my bag of jelly babies from classroom to classroom and explaining my disease to each new teacher (despite not really knowing myself at this point!)

It wasn’t long before other parents complained: “Why can’t my child take sweets to class? This isn’t fair on my child!”

Jelly babies began to lose their appeal.

Although this situation was quickly resolved – it’s easy to justify when your child can suffer from life threatening hypoglycemia – but having sweets for hypo treatment gradually became less exciting and more sickening for me as an 11-year-old.

Today, I still cycle through different hypo treatments. I find that after a certain amount of time using one glucose tablet, gel, sweet, or juice, I end up hating it. Perhaps it becomes a subconscious connection between the sweets and the uncomfortable feeling of low blood sugars? I can’t say for sure. And I don’t know if it’s just a peculiar habit that I have developed myself…

On the plus note, I’ll probably like jelly babies again in a few weeks.

Diabetes is definitely an odd disease.

By Kate Harborne

photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthanddave/278517611/">Ruth and Dave</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>

#hypoglycaemia #diabetes #jellybabies