Diabetes for Dramatic Effect

Bren and I were watching a TERRIBLE TV show the other day; Witness Number 3. Seriously – I highly recommend that you absolutely do not waste your time watching it. Aside from the truly awful acting (like, annoyingly bad), something else stood out to me; something one of the characters said about his diabetic brother:

"My brother was type one diabetic for 25 years. NEVER made a mistake. Then, just once, he was so stressed, he forgot he had already done an injection. Double-dosed, ended up in a diabetic coma, died in the back of the ambulance. One mistake."

We both looked at each other and literally immediately started laughing. How ridiculous?!

If you're a diabetic, or close to someone who is diabetic, you’ll know that it is near an impossible to make ONE mistake in 25 years. I would say that most diabetics will struggle to make it through one day without making a mistake.

And this is the problem with the perception of diabetes in the media, or in public in general; it's easy until it isn't. Then, when it isn't, it's this big scary thing that is going to make you unwell or unhealthy, put you in a coma, or kill you.

I mean, I’m generalising here. Sometimes they get it right, but that’s few and far between.

I've seen so, so many films or TV shows make jokes out of diabetes, or make it something debilitating or to be scared of.

"you've eaten so many *insert ‘unhealthy’ food here*, you'll make yourself diabetic!" – I’d put good money on it that you’ve heard this said on TV at least once. Diabetes is perceived to be an unhealthy person's disease - something we've done to ourselves. And that just is not the case. Honestly, the sheer number of times I've been asked,"Oh, did you eat a lot of sweets as a kid, then?", or, “were you overweight as a child?” when I've told someone I'm diabetic, actually makes my blood boil.

I don't actually even care about the diabetic jokes etc. on TV. I know it just comes from ignorance, and if I got annoyed about it every time I saw it, I’d be quite an angry person.

What I do care about is what it makes people who don’t understand diabetes think.

As a teenager, I remember actively trying to hide my diabetes from new people. I have one memory of literally hiding at the bottom of my bed, doing my injection as sneakily and quietly as possible, so a new friend didn't see. And this definitely wasn't an isolated incident; if people had known me for a while, I was super open about my diabetes. But when I met new people, I was so desperate not to tell them straight away, for two reasons:

1. I didn't want to scare them. I sort of assumed that if people knew I was diabetic, they'd be scared to be 'responsible' for my wellbeing. That’s obviously not the case; most diabetics I know are more than capable of keeping themselves alive!

2. I thought they might think less of me; like I was or had been some kind of chocolate addict, or I couldn’t control myself around a pizza (not necessarily untrue!). I hated that people might think it was my own fault, even if I knew that wasn’t the case.

And so I'd try to keep it a secret, at least until people knew me better.

I imagine that a lot of young people with diabetes feel like that. I really think these perceptions can damage confidence, create and worsen anxiety, cause body image issues… the list goes on. Now, it spurs me on to be the best I can be and do things I never thought I'd do, but it’s super hard when you’re young, and I do think it all stems from the wider public image of diabetes.

I'd also say this is part of the reason I avoided wearables, like the Omnipod or the Libre, for so long - I was genuinely embarrassed people would see and would make judgements. Now, it seems crazy to even worry what people would think of me being diabetic. I'm so happy to talk about it, and very proud to wear my Libre and Omnipod - and I hope it helps others someday.

But it does make me wish that anyone putting diabetes in the public eye - whether that be on TV, in a film, in a podcast (hey – did I mention my podcast episode comes out next month?!?!), would actually do some proper research – maybe even speak to a real life diabetic!? It might help to fix the misconceptions.