Let’s talk about diabetes community

Do you feel part of a diabetes community? Bridget McNulty unpacks why it’s so important to her.

Why a diabetes community matters

This weekend marks 17 years since I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes – my seventeenth diaversary! Next month it will be 13 years since we started Sweet Life. So I always feel a little nostalgic around this time of year, thinking how much has changed for me…

When I was diagnosed, I knew one person with diabetes – an older man who had been diagnosed as a kid and didn’t like talking about it. I had a very sudden, dramatic diagnosis: rushed to ICU in DKA, 3 days away from a diabetic coma, according to my doctor. The whole thing is a blur: I was desperately sick, desperately thin, constantly hungry, blurry eyed, exhausted and emotional. I read everything I was given in the hospital about diabetes, and it all told me I was now at greater risk of blindness, amputation, kidney failure, heart disease.

Nowhere did I read that I could live a perfectly normal, happy, healthy life with diabetes if I looked after myself.
That’s why we started Sweet Life.

A diabetes community matters so that we can share the stories of people with diabetes who are thriving, and so that we can offer hope to those who have just been diagnosed. But there’s so much more to it than that…

Diabetes is hard

Living with diabetes is so hard. Not every day, but some days it totally sucks. And while your family and friends might try their best to understand, there’s a certain shorthand that comes from living with diabetes – you don’t have to explain why you’re exhausted after a night of high blood sugar, or how your head hurts from the low you had earlier.

It’s not just the physical effects, either. The invisible workload of having a chronic condition and constantly thinking about your blood sugar / medication / food / activity is deeply exhausting on an emotional level. Never getting a day off from diabetes is a tough pill to swallow. Other people with diabetes get it – instantly. Not having to explain yourself is a real gift.

We’re all in this together

This is what it boils down to, isn’t it? We’re all in this together. We’re all trying our best, whatever that looks like. It will look different for each of us, because we’re all so different, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are all walking this path together.

Sweet Life began as a quarterly magazine – we used to distribute free copies around the country four times a year (take a look at them here!) When we moved entirely online, after 5 years, I was so sad at first – I love print! But the joy of an online community is that we can talk to each other: we can have conversations.

The downside of that, of course, is that people don’t always honour the spirit of respect and togetherness in these conversations. I posted this on our Facebook page a little while ago because we were getting an increase in ALL CAPS comments judging people for the decisions they were making, and suggesting that there is one correct way to live with diabetes (there absolutely is not!)

The responses were amazing – check them out here.

Do you feel part of a diabetes community?

What about you – do you feel part of a diabetes community? Have you joined our Facebook page, or our Instagram community? There are independent WhatsApp groups all over South Africa, if you’re keen to connect with someone locally, too.

Is there anything you’d love to have as part of this diabetes community, anything that feels like it’s missing? Let us know!

You are not alone in this…