How Instagram pushed me to save my health

Talking about my illness is uncomfortable. My eyes start to burn, my stomach becomes a knot and my throat dries up. These aren't just symptoms of feeling uneasy, they're symptoms of my chronic condition.

I'm type 1 diabetic - as readers who have been here before will know. I have been this way for about 11 years of my life, since I was eight years old. For over a decade, I have taken daily insulin injections and blood tests to survive. For over a decade, I have woken up in the middle of the night, shaking and crying, to eat food before I faint. For over a decade, I have had fears about my future state of health. For over a decade, I have heard people say 'but you're thin, how can you be diabetic?'. For over a decade I have explained the ins and outs and the whys and whats.

And yet, I still feel no closer to understanding what's really happening to me.

Photo credit: A photo of me injecting taken for the Metro online.

One of my biggest fears is living my entire life never truly knowing how to tame this wild beast of a condition, and one day dying because I was either clueless or the NHS couldn't help me any longer.

There are some diabetics who chose to ignore their condition. They ignore their injections, their blood monitors and their symptoms. They go out partying every weekend, they never count their food and they can't even remember how to prime a pen.

There are other diabetics who test their blood sugars ten times a day and take insulin for the tiniest correction. They go to every hospital appointment, use the best equipment and analyse every part of their life around their illness.

Me? I'm somewhere in the middle. I have a battered 10-year-old blood monitor with a weird crack in the screen. I re-use needles (disgusting!), love carbs, and mainly use the guessing frame work whenever it comes to injecting. I don't ignore my condition, but I don't exactly pamper it either. In many ways I neglect it - the biggest thing in my life that could take my life within hours if I'm not careful.

It sounds insane. But I believe it's natural to end end up having a strange relationship with whatever illness you may have. To me, It's like a little enemy (essentially a maniac toddler) that won't go away. Whenever it perks up, I roll my eyes. Whenever it's quiet, I worry that something is happening without me knowing, like it's up to no good behind the scenes. I'm not in a constant state of anxiety (take that back - yes I am. And I know that people who know me well will also be shouting 'yes you are') but there's something about this illness that leaves you with a dull rumble in the back of your brain. All. The. Time. Since I was eight.

It's pretty easy to feel alone, and like a shitty diabetic in front of able bodied doctors who tut at my data, as though they could live with the condition any better than I could. That was until I found the strange world of t1 Instagram.

You may notice some users on Instagram have 't1' in their handle. It stands for Type 1 diabetic/diabetes. I've seen it over and over, but never paid much attention until recently. I always thought they were super athletic diabetics, showing off their perfect blood levels, their perfect lack of bruises from injections and their love for 'life!'. Just another sea of perfect Instagrammers, but except with these people, they were pretending they weren't sick.

The reality, when I looked into it, was quite different. The posts I saw from these users were more along the lines of 'I just woke up and my blood sugar levels are through the roof - kill me'. It sounds extreme - but it's comforting. I know exactly what that person feels, I can list off their pains and aches. Other posts state 'I worked through my lunch break and now my blood is low, when will my boss understand I need rest? #type1life.' These captions, photos of pricked fingers and marked skin, piles of blood test strips and boxes full of dextrose tablets remind me of one thing - none of us, not one, is perfect.

We're all operating through this mind field that is chronic illness together. Rather than feeling that I was a shitty diabetic for not being A* at my illness, I felt like I belonged to a community of equally frustrated and unwell people.

I realised a lot through looking through these accounts and interacting with other diabetics. That 1) we hate that big pharmaceutical companies profit from our illness which will likely make diabetes incurable and 2) that if we're going to be a little bit fucked up, we may as well be honest about it.

I've learned that while I'm diabetic, and I should check my blood sugars more, eat regularly, and inject whenever I need to - I also learned that I'm human. I'm flawed, tired, and in need of a functioning body. Until then, I plan on simply surviving.

Whatever that looks like.