My daughter was 9 when she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. A life-changing day for the whole family.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, which means your immune system attacks healthy body tissue by mistake. In this case, it attacks the cells in your pancreas. Your damaged pancreas is then unable to produce insulin. When this happens, the blood sugar (glucose) level goes very high as glucose cannot be moved out of your bloodstream and into your cells. Treatment to then control the blood glucose level is with insulin via injections or an insulin pump.

It’s not known exactly what triggers the immune system to attack the pancreas, but some researchers have suggested it may be a viral infection.

So our Geordie Life became our Sweet Geordie Life (see what I did there!!) We hope for a cure one day, but until then hopefully this blog can also be used to raise awareness and provide education so that others have some understanding of what our Type 1 kids have to go through. Type 1 doesn’t stop my daughter from doing anything, but we do have to think about things more and it is always skulking along in the background, waiting to remind us it is still there.

Until then, we amuse ourselves with our ‘inside jokes’, like saying out loud in public ‘Are you still high?’ and ‘When did you last prick?’. Those in the know will be laughing along now, and the rest of you will be thinking I have gone completely mad. Bear with me, there will be more posts on the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of Type 1 – another ‘inside joke’ there in case you missed it. 🙂