Claire Panchal, 32, from Burgess Hill, neglected her condition for years...
Jotting the numbers down in my diary, I knew that I would fool my doctors.
I had been for most of my teenage years.
You see, I was diagnosed with type 1diabetes in 1996, when I was six years old.
And during my teen years I was rebelling against this diagnosis in every way I could.
I would go out and have fun, ignoring my diabetes, eating and drinking what I wanted, not taking my insulin –I didn’t even own a working glucose metre.
Taking my health into my hands was so dangerous, but I didn’t care.
Iwas sick a lot of the time –I felt lethargic, confused, always needing the toilet, thirsty, and had ear and chest infections.
And looking back, Iknew this was as a result of ignoring my diabetes.
‘You need to get your levels under control,’ doctors warned.
But this didn’t stop me.
Fudging the numbers in my glucosediary was just one of my ways of deceiving everyone around me.
‘I’m getting on with it,’ I’d smile at my parents Dian, 68, and David, 69. ‘I’m fine!’
As someone who’d always been quite independent, my parents believed that I was looking after myself.
And by the time I was at university studying business management, my diabetes was out of control.
Meeting my now husband Rahul, 31, as we studied, I hid my rebellion from him, too.
In 2013 we got engaged, and in 2015, when planning the wedding, I had a wake-up call.
‘I can’t wait to have children,’ Rahul told me, and I realised that I couldn’t keep going on like this.
I can’t have kids when I’m slowly killing myself, I thought.
I knew I had to get my diabetes under control if Rahul and I were to have a future.
But I had ignored my illness for so long, I had no idea how to.
I reached out to my GP for some extra support and Rahul was always by my side.
I found a community of supportive people online
Together we learnt to count carbs and how much insulin to inject myself with. It was a relief to share what I had been hiding from with Rahul –I felt less alone.
I continued to battle along with Rahul by my side, but in 2017 I found a whole community of people like me.
Clicking the Instagram explore tab, I saw someone had shared a photo of their FreeStyle Libre –a sensor that helps to monitor glucose levels. Scrolling a little more, I realised lots of people were doing the same.
Why are people sharing photos of their diabetes? I thought. I’ve spent my whole life trying to hide it, and these people are proud of it...
I decided Ino longer wanted to struggle in the darkness, I wanted to be proud just like these Instagram accounts.
Creating my fi
