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In May 2013 I will be running my first full distance marathon in Edinburgh.  I am running to raise funds for the charity JDRF (Juvenile Diabetic Research Foundation).

I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1976.

 

When I run the marathon I’ll be 61 years old and by then I will have been a Type 1 Diabetic for almost 37 years.  

 

In 2010, after 34 years of telling myself I was doing fine and when I was still feeling reasonably fit and healthy, I had a heart attack! Thanks to the medical staff in Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, I survived and was discharged, in June 2010, with coronary stents – three in total - in both coronary arteries.

 

In June 2011, after re-assessing my lifestyle choices and losing almost 4 stones (25 kilograms) in weight, I ran my first half-marathon in Skye, where I have been living for the last seven years.  I ran that race to raise funds for an island charity called “Lucky2bHere”, which seemed appropriate, and to repay, with thanks, the care I had received in Raigmore. (The charity provides portable cardiac de-fibrillators to remote communities in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.)

 

In 2012 I completed a further five half-marathons – Inverness, Stornoway, Skye (again), Harris and Aviemore – none for charity but just to prove to myself that I could!

 

During 2012 I was again the recipient of excellent care and attention from medical staff at Raigmore Hospital but this time from the Diabetic Care Team, primarily Lorna Grant, Diabetic Specialist Nurse, and Dr Bal.  As a result of their attention I was prescribed an insulin pump and my life changed overnight.  Now, rather than enduring the restrictive regime of multiple daily insulin injections, I can live a more flexible life – still regulated but to a much lesser degree – by the continuous infusion of insulin via the insulin pump.

 

The insulin pump brings more normality to my daily life, making ordinary things more achievable without having to plan in advance for the necessity of regular meals and insulin injections, .  

 

It also makes running distances longer than half-marathons more practicable and possible!

 

For those of you who don’t know much about diabetes there are two types - Type 1 and Type 2.  

 

Type 1 diabetes is (currently) an incurable, chronic, illness which, once diagnosed, stays with you for life.  

 

Type 1 diabetes can happen at any age and can affect anyone but it is more commonly first diagnosed in younger people, which is why it is sometimes also referred to as juvenile onset diabetes.

 

 Type 1 diabetes is NOT caused by over-eating or eating the wrong types of food or by being overweight or not taking exercise.  It is caused by the body’s own immune system destroying the insulin producing cells found in the pancreas.  (Insulin is essential for the digestion and conversion of carbohydrate which the body needs to produce energy.)  

 

The only treatment for Type 1 diabetes is to give replacement insulin, artificially, and people with Type 1 diabetes rely either on multiple daily insulin injections, or continuous infusions of insulin from an insulin pump, every day - just to stay alive.

 

Living with diabetes need not be too restrictive although it does mean that your daily life is, of necessity, more regulated than other people’s but one of the main problems with Type 1 diabetes is that it can have quite serious long term side effects. 

 

Type 1 diabetics, for example, are in the high risk category for suffering heart disease of one form or another; and poor control of the illness in its early years can lead to some very serious conditions in later life including blindness or limb amputations.

 

JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) is the only charity in the UK providing funding for research to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes and is the world’s leading charitable funder of Type 1 diabetes research.  It is run by people with Type 1, for people with Type 1.  

 

Finding the cure for Type 1 diabetes is only a matter of time - and of course money - but when a cure is found it will release hundreds of thousands of people in the UK alone from the tyranny of life-long insulin injections.  It will also massively reduce the costs to the National Health Service of treating the many complications that inevitably occur in the later lives of people with Type 1.

 

So, on Sunday 26 May 2013 I will be running my first FULL marathon, in Edinburgh, and this time, I am running to raise funds for JDRF to say thanks for the care I received in 2012 from the Raigmore Diabetic Team.

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You can find out more about JDRF by going to their web site at www.jdrf.org.uk.