How I ran (and managed my diabetes during) the Sheffield Half Marathon

I did it! I (somehow) ran – and survived – the Sheffield Half Marathon!

I’m not going to lie, it was brutal. I knew it would be tough, but it was even more difficult than I had imagined. I wasn’t anywhere near as prepared as I’d hoped I would be.  In my last post, I wrote about my plans for my first outdoor training run. That didn’t happen.  As prepared as I was from a diabetes perspective, I hadn’t checked the weather forecast and woke up to a blanket of snow – so I ended up running eight miles on the treadmill instead.

That meant the 13.1 mile course would be the first time I had attempted running any significant distance outside. It would also be a baptism of fire in tackling Sheffield’s cruelly steep hills. Not ideal.

The night before the race I made sure I had everything I needed to manage my diabetes. I squeezed as many SiS gels as I could fit into my running belt (five), along with a tube of glucotabs, an energy drink, my glucose tester, finger pricker and a handful of testing strips.

This is how it went…

Pre-race blood sugar: 5.7mmol/l

Shortly after meeting a friend and going to collect my race number, I decided to check my blood sugar. This was when I first realised how tricky it as going to be to test during the race.  Finding a place to prise my glucose tester from my bulging running belt, take a testing strip out of its packet and prick my finger – among crowds of people – was difficult. I was also worried when I saw the reading.  In normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled to see my blood sugar was 5.7 – but, in preparation for a half marathon, I thought it was a bit on the low side.  I panic-ate two glucotabs and had an energy gels before I’d even crossed the start line. As the race began, the atmosphere and support were incredible – but for the first two miles I was extremely anxious about having a hypo.

Mile 2 blood sugar: 5.2mmol/l

My initial plan had been to check my blood sugar roughly every three miles, but I was so worried about my lower-than-expected starting point that I decided to stop (rushing to the side of the road and balancing all my things on a wall) to test at mile two. I was really frustrated because it meant I lost the group I had been running with, but I’m glad I erred on the side of caution as my blood glucose had fallen slightly to 5.2. I took another energy gel before embarking on the toughest part of the course. The first five-and-a-half miles of the Sheffield Half Marathon are a relentless uphill slog. My treadmill-only training had not prepared me for the brutality of the course. I have to admit, there were times I was questioning whether I’d be able to make it round at all. Thankfully, I knew my boyfriend would be meeting me at mile five – giving me some motivation to keep going when my body just wanted to stop.

Mile 5 blood sugar: 4.2mmol/l

By the time I got to Andrew I was exhausted and slightly delirious. I checked my blood sugar and it was 4.2 – meaning that, if it continued to fall, I’d have a hypo. I took a couple of glucotabs, which had started to disintegrate after being shaken around in my running belt. I also took another energy gel, despite starting to feel a bit sick. I knew if I could continue for another mile, the rest of the course would be mostly (but not completely) downhill. I was desperately hoping it would become easier.

Mile 9 blood sugar: 9.2mmol/l

Thankfully it did. As the route began its descent back towards the city centre, I actually started to enjoy myself. The Peak District views were absolutely stunning and gave me a much-needed distraction from my increasingly achy legs. I wasn’t running fast, but I seemed to breeze through the next four miles. When I got to the nine mile marker I realised I hadn’t checked my blood sugar for a while, so I stopped at the side of the road to test.  I’d lost all dexterity and I fumbled my way through three failed testing strips before I managed to get a reading – 9.2.  The run had clearly got my blood pumping because my finger wouldn’t stop bleeding!

Mile 12 blood sugar: 6.6mmol/l

Andrew met me again at the ten mile point, giving me another milestone to focus on. The closer we got to the city, the louder the crowds got – and their cheers definitely helped as I started to struggle again.  I knew once I hit mile 12 I was nearly there, but the finish line still felt so far away. I stopped to test my blood sugar again – it had fallen to 6.6. I took another energy gel, gritted my teeth and kept going.

Post-race blood sugar: 7.2mmol/l

I don’t think I’ll ever forget running the final metres towards the finish line. I remember hearing the cheers of strangers calling my name as my weary legs carried me across the line.  I had been holding back tears but they spilled over when I saw Andrew.

I can’t really describe how I was feeling. I was relieved, exhausted and in so much pain, but incredibly proud. In part because I’d tackled the distance (my chip time was 2 hours 57 minutes), but mostly because I’d managed to keep my blood sugar under control.

I’d proved to myself I could do it. That I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. And that my diabetes doesn’t have to stop me doing anything.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to all the wonderful people who cheered me on, offered words of advice and helped me raise £480 for the Sheffield Scanner through their generous sponsorship. I was running as part of the University of Sheffield team supporting the £2 million campaign to buy an MRI-PET scanner. I’m so, so grateful for your support!

World Diabetes Day 2017: My diagnosis story

Six years ago, almost to the day, my body began to attack itself. My immune system started to destroy the beta cells in my pancreas and my ability to produce my own insulin – the hormone everyone needs to stay alive –  was rapidly fading. I was developing type one diabetes and I had no idea it was happening.

Today is World Diabetes Day and this is my diagnosis story.

I was 26, newly single and I’d just moved into my first flat on my own. I’d thrown myself into my job as journalist on a weekly newspaper; I was focused on my career and on a constant hunt for my next front page. I was always busy – often exhausted – but rarely gave a second thought to my health. I didn’t think I needed to. I prided myself on being something of a machine and thought I was unstoppable.

When I woke up one late November morning with blurred vision I wasn’t worried.  I drove into Leeds, where I was covering a hearing at the city’s crown court. I remember leaving the court building after listening to a morning of legal arguments in a dull room filled with harsh strip lighting. My eyes couldn’t adjust to the outdoors. As I walked back to my car, I was struggling to focus on anything – the shop signs, the crowds of people, the traffic. But I still wasn’t particularly concerned. I hadn’t been sleeping well and put it down to tiredness.

In fact, I was so convinced I was just a bit exhausted that, when my editor insisted I go to A&E, I thought I was wasting NHS time. After a brief spell in triage, I was sent away and told to see an optician.  One of the questions I’d been asked was about my family’s history of certain conditions and I’d told the doctor I had an aunt and uncle with diabetes (I didn’t know which type), but it didn’t seem to trigger any alarm bells for either of us.

It was actually my news editor who first suggested I may have diabetes after Googling my ‘symptoms’.  I thought I only had one, but she’d noticed several.  I’d lost some weight, which I knew but had put down to my recent break-up. I was always thirsty and drinking litre-bottles of water at lunchtime. I was going to the toilet more frequently and I’d been complaining I wasn’t sleeping well which was, in part, due to getting up several times a night to go to the loo.  I didn’t know it, but the four most commons symptoms of diabetes are known as the four Ts: Toilet, Thirsty, Tired and Thinner. I had them all.

After seeing an optician, who pointed out that it wasn’t normal for someone’s vision to deteriorate so rapidly overnight, I made an appointment with my GP.  He initially told me to go to a different optician for a second opinion, but eventually agreed to do some blood tests. A week later I was summoned to discuss my results.  My blood glucose reading was high. It was 19mmol/L, when a normal reading should be between 4-7mmol/L – however, he wanted to repeat the test because he ‘didn’t believe it’. I remember the doctor saying: “I don’t want to alarm you, it could be diabetes – but you don’t fit the profile.”  He suggested I was too old to have type one, but too slim to have type two.  I now know that both of these assumptions were wrong.   When I came out of the appointment I called my mum and cried.  I just wanted answers.

While I was waiting for the results from my second blood tests – when I’d already had to wait a week for an appointment to have my blood taken – I was feeling increasingly unwell.  I was supposed to be going to Stoke for a weekend with my friends, but I was exhausted and didn’t feel comfortable driving such a long distance with poor vision.  My friend Becky is a doctor and when I told her why I couldn’t visit, she urged me to call a friend immediately and to get them to take me to hospital. As soon as I put the phone down I got in my car and drove there straight away.

When I arrived, doctors tested my blood sugar and it was in the high 20s.  My ketone levels were also extremely high.  At the time, I didn’t know what ketones were – I now know they’re an acid created when the body has insufficient insulin to get glucose from the blood into the cells to use as energy.  I was told I was seriously ill and it was lucky I’d arrived at hospital when I did as diabetic ketoacidosis can be fatal.

By the time a doctor confirmed their diagnosis – that I had type one diabetes – I’d already known it for weeks. I’d prepared myself to hear those words, but I was not prepared for the reality of living with the condition. For the rest of my life I’ll have to inject the insulin my body needs but can no longer create itself.  I’ll have to monitor my blood sugar, count the carbohydrates I eat and make potentially life or death decisions about how much insulin to inject on a daily basis.  It’s a reality I still find difficult to accept now.

Within 24 hours of diagnosis, I had been sent home from hospital with a bag of insulin and needles and a new way of life.

Six years on, I’ve had to learn what diabetes is.  As it’s a condition you largely manage yourself, I’ve had no choice.  I’ve had type one diabetes for 2,162 days now and have given myself more than 10,000 injections in that time.  I don’t always get things right – I’ve had more hypos than I can count and have had one serious hospital admission – but I am constantly learning to manage my diabetes.

My diagnosis story is unusual because it took so long – more than three weeks of appointments.  I didn’t know the symptoms, so I didn’t recognise them.  My doctor wrongly thought that, as I wasn’t a child, it was unlikely I had type one. I’ve since learnt that type one can develop at any age. Once I was out of hospital and recovering, I complained about my GP’s conduct as I believe his failure to diagnose me left me dangerously ill. I live on my own and it’s awful to think about what could have happened if I had not gone to hospital when I did.  I now trust my own instincts more when I know something doesn’t feel right.

On World Diabetes Day, I hope more people learn the symptoms and raise awareness of type one diabetes. If you have any questions leave a comment below. I’d also be really interested to hear others’ diagnosis stories.

Waking up in intensive care with DKA

I have no memory of this time last year. I was unconscious.

I didn’t know it, but my blood sugar levels had soared and poisonous chemicals were pumping through my veins. My body was, in essence, becoming acidic.

I have type one diabetes and had developed diabetic ketoacidosis.

DKA, as it is known, is a life-threatening condition. It happens when a severe lack of insulin means the body cannot use glucose for energy and the body starts to break down other body tissue as an alternative energy source. This causes a build up of poisonous chemicals called ketones. If unchecked, this can be fatal.

For me, it nearly was. And I had not seen it coming.

A few days earlier I had been at bridesmaid at my sister’s wedding. I was full of energy, running around chasing my baby nephew. Family and friends had commented on how well I looked. The next day I started to feel a little nauseous, but put it down to perhaps one too many glasses of wine at the reception. Overnight, I felt horrendous. My smoke alarm battery had died and it was beeping incessantly, but I felt too ill to deal with it. Perhaps I should have taken that as a warning sign. I remember staggering to and from the bathroom to be sick. I remember lying on the sofa wondering what the number for NHS Direct was. That’s all I remember. Two days later I woke up in intensive care.

The gaps have been filled in for me. Colleagues, who had become worried when I didn’t turn up at work, leapt into action. They called my family, who had seen me looking healthy and well just three days earlier. A workmate’s partner was sent to my flat, where she found me babbling incoherently on the floor behind my front door. I have no idea how I ended up there.

I was taken by ambulance to hospital where I was immediately admitted to intensive care. I had kidney failure, was severely dehydrated and struggling to breathe. A central line was put in my neck and I was pumped full of fluid, insulin, antibiotics and sodium bicarbonate. I’m told my eyes were rolling around my head and I was making little sense.

My first memory was having a feeding tube forced down my nose. I must have appeared responsive as a doctor asked me: ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Hospital,’ I replied.

‘Do you know which one?’

For some reason, I gave the name of the hospital in my hometown. A place I have not lived for 11 years now. I was clearly still delirious.

I then remember waking up wearing a ‘space helmet’, or CPAP as the doctors called it. My sister says the first thing I said to her was: ‘What’s this thing on my head?’ I was later told the helmet was replicating the effect of sticking my head out of the window travelling at 100mph down the motorway, forcing air into my lungs to help me breathe.

From then, I was conscious, but still not well. My kidneys weren’t working properly. Within a week of being in hospital, I had put on four stone in fluid. When I was admitted to hospital I had shrivelled to just over seven stone. I was now 12 and a half stone – my body weight had more than doubled.

I was bedbound, relying on nurses to clean me. The bedsores were excruciatingly painful and I couldn’t move. After a week on intensive care, when I was first moved to a ward, two nurses struggled to roll me over to wash me and change my bed sheets.

After two weeks of being unable to move, when I was finally free of a catheter, I made my first attempt to walk the few steps to the toilet. Within seconds I’d collapsed into a heap on the floor. I had to lie there until a passing nurse heard me calling out for help. My body didn’t feel like my own. My legs were like tree trunks, my arms like Popeye’s and I could barely waddle a few steps. I felt like I had no dignity left. I cried.

Doctors, concerned about some unexpected pressure around my heart, feared I had a blood clot. My kidneys were not functioning well enough to cope with the dye for a CT scan so I had an ultrasound on my legs. Nothing was found, but it could still not be ruled out.

Despite all this, I had many reasons to be thankful. Firstly, that I had even been found when I collapsed. Had it been any longer, I dread to think what might have happened. Family and friends visited me every day and gave me the positivity and strength needed to cope with three weeks in hospital.

Eventually, my kidneys were able to handle water tablets. I was losing half a stone a day. In fact, once all the fluid had gone it revealed a frail, weak frame. My muscles had wasted away. A CT scan revealed I didn’t have a blood clot and the pressure around my heart soon disappeared. After 21 days in hospital, I was discharged.

That doesn’t mean it is over. Hopefully no long term damage has been done, but I am still diabetic and always will be.

I wanted to share what happened to raise awareness of how dangerous diabetes can be. I had it and I didn’t know. I knew low blood sugar could be immediately bad and high blood sugar posed risks in the long term. But I didn’t realise it was possible to get so ill so quickly.

Many people ask me why this happened. I don’t know. I had not been controlling my condition well, but I had not been deliberately skipping insulin. There are two possible explanations for what went wrong: I became sick and my blood sugar rocketed, or my blood sugar was high and it made me sick. I’ll never know which one it was.

What I do know is when I got sick, I didn’t know what to do. To manage my condition, I inject myself with insulin four times a day. When I’m unwell, I have a flowchart to follow which involves giving a certain percentage of the previous day’s insulin every two hours. Initially, I hadn’t felt sick enough to consider following my ‘sick day rules’. By the time I did, I was too sick to contemplate doing it.

I was only diagnosed with diabetes two and a half years ago. I’d had 26 years without having to enforce a regimented routine of counting carbohydrates and injecting insulin. I found it difficult to adjust and I’m still learning now.

Had I been a child when I was diagnosed, I believe I’d have been given more support. Within 24 hours of diagnosis, I had been sent home from hospital with a bag of insulin and needles and told I would be giving myself injections for the rest of my life. I was then largely left to my own devices.

I’m still not the perfect diabetic. I probably never will be.

But I now know how important it is to look after myself properly. My life depends on it.