written by Magnus
�rnsk�ldsvik, Sweden
This is my 'D' story�
I�ve read some of the stories that were sent to Gary�s 'Diabetes Poetry Room' web site and I can see that my story begins like many others. Diabetes was nothing that was familiar to me before I got it. I�ve heard about 'D' before and I knew what it was. But the only people I knew who had it were the husbands of two of my father�s sisters, but they had type 2. I�ve read Michelle�s �D� story; mine starts the same way.
I began to feel some changes in March-April of 1998. I started to drink a lot of water and I was always thirsty, I must have drunk several liters of water a day. Every morning when I woke up my mouth was like sandpaper, completely dry, it felt like I had slept in a desert. My father recognized early that something wasn�t right, but I assured him that everything was all right. I have always eaten well and large portions but now I was eating like a baby. Though the change went very slowly, over two months it never occurred to me that I was really ill. I thought that it was just a bad period or something that eventually would change. If all these symptoms would have happened over night it probably would had occurred to me much earlier. During the last week in May I felt really lousy so I said to my father that I would visit the doctor. When I got there the doctor immediately took a glucose test, my glucose level was so high that he immediately saw that I had 'D'. My father was at that time seriously involved in my little brothers� soccer team and he was always talking about this soccer. I was just sick and tired of hearing him talking about soccer everyday, and I always thought he made a big deal of it all. Well anyway, the doctor decided that I had to stay in the hospital for a few days, so my father and I went home for some lunch and to get some other stuff at home.
I remember it so clearly even today when we walked through the parking lot outside the hospital, even what he said to me. In Sweden there is a famous soccer player that has diabetes, and when we were walking through the parking lot my father said... �Well you know Per Zetterberg has diabetes and you see he can play soccer at a top level�. I know that my father only had good intentions with saying that, and I know that he only tried to show compassion but at that moment I only wanted to shove a football down his throat. Today I can look back at this and laugh, but it hasn�t always been so easy, and sometimes it�s still very tough. When I got the diabetes I thought that the biggest problem was going to be eating right, and at the right time. I know that for many people this is the biggest problem, but not for me. We have eaten at determined times and I�ve always been playing soccer, hockey and trained a lot. For me the biggest problem has been that many people don�t think that you are especially ill, I think all with 'D' have this same problem. You can�t see that a person has'D', and at the most time you can�t see if he or she is feeling really lousy if you don�t know the person really well. I behave and act precisely as I did before I got 'D', but that does not actually mean that I feel the same as I did before I got it. I trained a lot last year but during the summer I wasn�t home a lot so therefor I didn�t train so much either. Now when I study at the university I have begun training again with my friends and it�s hard starting up again. Sometimes you have these bad days when your body doesn�t manage to do what you like to do. It almost feels like you won�t be able to lift any more weight cause you are completely exhausted, your friends can�t understand that this is the fact of 'D'. They think or it seems like they think that I�m just lazy and don�t try hard enough�but I have learned to accept this, I can�t blame anyone for not knowing how I feel. It�s impossible to exactly know what a person goes through before you have been in the exact same position. I really hope that some day there will be a cure for this disease. Even though you can live with diabetes, it is not always something you can or want to deal with. I wish all my best to all you 'D' persons out there and all the relatives and friends to 'D' persons. We will win this battle against 'D', if not tomorrow maybe the next day or next week.
Magnus
�rnsk�ldsvik, Sweden
Thank you very much for your 'D' story Magnus