It’s been a while since I posted on here. But in the past
few weeks a number of things have happened to make me decide to post again. I
have written and re-written this particular post a number of times as I’m not
sure how honest I should be. However, I have realised that I can’t separate my
diabetes from what I am about to write about and, if I want to write candidly
about my diabetes as I set out to do, I need to acknowledge the things that run
alongside it, things that I really don’t think I can separate enough to write
about one and not the other. When I began writing, a close friend of mine
warned me about the perils of being too honest. I hope I am not crossing that
line.
The first thing that happened as a reminder to write was,
as always, an appointment with my diabetes doctor at Haeundae Paik hospital. I
say ‘my’; terminology I wouldn’t have used often at home where, at the
beginning of my diabetic career at least, I was shunted from doctor to locum to
doctor and never managed to forge relationships, let alone trust, with any of
my doctors. Here, I have seen the same doctor every 3 months. While the
language is still stilted my confidence in him is growing. My HbA1c this time
round was 7.8%. Not perfect by any means but heading in the right direction!
The other thing is related, and is the reason both for my
posting and the fact it’s taken so long. A month or so ago, I saw a link on a
friend’s Facebook page. It resonated with me and I made a pledge, alongside
Stephen Fry and Ruby Wax amongst other celebs, to be more open.
People deal with diabetes in very different way. I have
met people for whom it was merely a blip, and a small one at that. For whom
having to go through the daily rigmarole of injections and blood tests was
nothing, just part of their routine. For me, and many others, it’s never been
like that. In fact, according to NICE (the National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence in the UK ), people with chronic conditions are three times
more likely to suffer from depression. And I have slowly realised that I am one
of those people. I can honestly say that, although I barely acknowledged it at
the time, that day in March 1995 turn my life upside down. It was more
significant to me than any other event in my life. I will never know whether
the diabetes is actually to blame, or whether I am just one of those people born
with a natural propensity towards depression. But for years, I have struggled
to find peace with my condition. I have resented it, rebelled against it, tried
to pretend it didn’t exist. And now, after 16 years, three months and five
days, I am finally coming to terms with it. I wouldn’t say I am happy sharing
my life with it, but we are finding ways to co-exist.
I say this with great tentativeness. I have thought this
before only to find things crashed down around me. This year has been one of
great turbulence. I never deal very well with change anyway, and the extent of
the changes I have inflicted upon myself this year have been the catalyst for a
whole other change.
For years I have dealt with feelings of inadequacy; never
feeling quite good enough and always waiting to be caught out. As a teenager I,
and I guess those around me, wrote it off as teenage angst and it was only
until recently, at 28, I realised it wasn’t shifting: teenage angst had become
adult angst and I had to deal with it. Honestly, I don’t know how I kept up the
pretence of keeping it all together for so long. On and off for years I have
seen counsellors. First an NHS counsellor at sixteen who wanted an easy fix, so
I gave her one: my parents’ divorce, something that I’m sure did affect me but
is definitely not the root of my problems. Next, at 23 or so, realising that
the majority of my negative feelings towards myself stemmed from my inability
to deal with my diabetes, I paid to go Private
and that only served to make me even more anxious as I couldn’t really afford
it and was tied into fixed terms, which I later realised is pretty unethical. Then,
in the year leading up to leaving for Korea, I burst into tears during an
appointment with the doctor at my diabetic clinic – not for the first, or last
time. She was amazing and referred me to a psychological department attached to
the clinic. After a few weeks (I was surprised at just how quickly it all came
around) I started seeing a psychologist who had an understanding of diabetes.
It was brilliant. He understood, without me needing to tell him, what a hypo
was, what I meant when my blood sugars were high. Truly amazing. And I couldn’t
help feeling a little frustrated that something similar wasn’t done sooner.
Looking back now, I realise that there were a number of times my depression
could have been picked up by a healthcare professional, yet it wasn’t; maybe I
was just too good at hiding it, or maybe the resources just weren’t there.
On leaving for Korea, I made the mistake I have made so
many times before: change everything and I will change too. Unfortunately not
to be: moving to another city, albeit on the other side of the world, doesn’t
change a thing. It was still me going. At first, I floated as high as ever
before. I was happy. But soon enough, those feelings began to creep back in.
And before I knew it I was crying constantly; barely making it through a day without
something setting me off. My workload buried me, I couldn’t make head nor tail
of my to-do lists because everything on them seemed to be needed to be done NOW. My head was a constant blur of shoulds; it
was too messy and busy to make sense of any of it. At home I was horrible:
moody, snappy, tearful, needy, all the things I have been off and on all my
life. But it got worse and worse. Until I realised that if I didn’t do
something, and quickly, it was all going to fall down around me. So I did.
First, I downloaded some Apps (yes, more). I honestly
think there is an App for everything you could possibly ever need. What did we
do before iPhones and iPads and the App store?! One, MoodMaster, was brilliant.
It described how I was feeling exactly (Mood Master describes the symptoms of
depression as, amongst others: doing very little, finding everything an effort,
not getting enjoyment from anything, not laughing or finding things funny,
sleeping badly, always feeling tired, feeling like everything is pointless,
avoiding people, being irritable, arguing with people). While sometimes, these
may just describe a bad day, for me it was more than that. These were the
things I was dealing with on a daily basis, constantly, and had been off and on
for years, even before I could really articulate them as feelings that were not
a normal part of life. I would sit at
social gatherings wondering how people could laugh. The App went on to tell me
it wasn’t my fault, that depression can be caused by a number of different
things, some of which were: having problems we can’t fix (diabetes), not
looking after yourself physically (I hadn’t exercised properly for years),
going through a traumatic experience and being inclined to see things in a
depressing way (unfortunately for me, I think this may just be the case! I’m
not your average glass-half-full lady…) But then it went on to give me a whole
list of practical ways to move forward, and so many of them made sense! No-one’s
ever done that before.
Next, I emailed a friend from home. She’d been bugging me
for weeks for an update but I’d been feeling so bad – and had convinced myself
that I couldn’t tell the truth because wasn’t I living the dream?! How could I
tell people back home just how hard I was finding getting through a day? So I
emailed her. And told her everything. It wasn’t new, we’d talked before, but
what a relief it was. Next I spoke to a couple of colleagues who, very quickly
became friends. Although I was petrified about doing this, it was wonderful to
share my burden, and surprising how supportive people are, even people I’d only
known for 6 months.
Then, I had a problem. I was in Korea. At home, I would
have gone straight to my doctor, who spoke English, and who would’ve taken the
next steps. Here, I had no idea who to turn to. So I bit the bullet and spoke
to someone I knew who spoke Korean. Within a week I had an appointment with an
English-speaking psychologist who diagnosed me with severe depression. Since
then, I have been taking each day at a time. I am, and always need to be aware
of this side of myself. I am trying to do the things that I need to do in order
to feel better: exercise, socialise and eat healthily, all three are things I
enjoy to a point, but which easily slip out of my reach when I begin to feel
down.
I am not writing this for sympathy. I am writing this
because people don’t write about things like this enough, and then they assume
they are alone in what they feel but more often than not they are not. The
pledge I made was to be more honest about depression. So here I am, being
(probably more honest than I should be) about my own, very personal experiences
which are linked, inextricably, to my diabetes demon.
