Every year on the 11th February I love to be surrounded by my family and friends. I call it my “Celebration of Life Day.” It is the day that 18 years ago I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. A day I’ll never forget. I was told by the doctor do not pass go, do not go home to get clothes, go straight to emergency at the hospital. Which I did, with mum by my side. I was 14 and mature, yet vulnerable with no idea what diabetes was. I thought it was just something where you ate too much sugar or not enough… how wrong I was.. IT’S ALL ABOUT BALANCE! 

Type 1 diabetes is where your pancreas decides to go to sleep… forever.. and basically the holy juice (insulin) can’t convert the sugar we eat into energy, so us diabetics need to inject it or pump it in to our glorious bodies! It essentially makes us more awesome (than we were before), and a term we love to use, a diabadass! 

So what’s this about balance? Well, imagine how hard it is to walk a tight rope. Now imagine trying to eat while walking a tight rope. That’s us. EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF EVERY SINGLE DAY. We don’t even get a break from the circus. There’s no end to this tight rope (for now). We just hold our head up high and literally become masters at multitasking. Like when you’re talking to me at the dinner table (or anywhere I’m about to shove food in my mouth), I’m literally:

• counting the carbohydrates on my plate to the gram (professional guess-timating)
• figuring out the amount of insulin needed for the carb
• remembering when I last ate
• figuring out if there’s any active insulin in my body
• thinking when I’m next going to eat (to further calculate the dosage)
• factoring in if I’ve done any exercise (as this will affect my dosage)
• AND THINKING AM I ONLY GOING TO EAT WHAT’S ON MY PLATE?
• Will I go for seconds? or thirds? (I love to eat you know) 

They are only a few factors that can affect blood sugar. Stress, sickness, altitude, intensity of exercise, duration of exercise, blah blah blah… but the sad truth is, it’s not just blah blah for us.. that stuff matters! We are diabetic mathematicians constantly calculating carbs, insulin and unknowns! 

Every single day I am thankful that we (us diabetics) can manage this. Even though I get it wrong all the time and eat too much, or give too much insulin.. The more positive I am, the more positive I'll be. We can all learn from this. 

So when it comes to my diaversary, hell yeah I wanna celebrate. This gift of life we’ve been given, we need to grab it by the you know what and sing from the mountain tops!! We must live, laugh and love our way through it. We are lucky we live in an age where medical and technological advancements are exactly where they are. Not to forget this great thing called the interwebby where we can connect and “socialise” with likeminded souls half way across the globe! 

So celebrate life, celebrate your gifts, celebrate yourself and those around you. Fill your days with positivity.