Why is Diabetes close to my heart? My fiancée Sarah has Type
1 Diabetes. She has had to manage this every day of her life since she was 24. The
condition –if not controlled properly– can cause permanent problems such as
blindness and can even be fatal. This is not to mention monitoring what to eat,
measuring your dosage of insulin, taking into account weather, exercise and a
whole host of factors that make your body react in many different ways to
insulin.

When I met Sarah she did not have the best control of her
diabetes, not for lack of trying but she was on a massive learning curve on her
own. To give you an example, a typical human’s blood measures around
5millimoles whereas Sarah was averaging 25millimoles – you don’t need to be an
expert to realise this is a dangerous place to be, especially as she had spent
18 weeks in and out of hospital on diagnosis.

When we met I did not have a clue and made the typical
mistake of saying “should you be eating that?” – the cardinal sin when eating
with someone with Type 1 Diabetes. I was thrown in the deep end when it came to
learning Type 1 Diabetes as our 2nd date was in hospital.

Since, Sarah and I have been on a long journey consisting of
hospital appointments every other week, rigorous trial and error with eating
and insulin dosages, facing fears, dealing with hypos and learning how to
control it and I am happy to say Sarah’s average is between 5-8millimoles,
which means she is healthy and happy. There are the odd slip-ups but diabetes
can be an ass like that!

We are engaged to be married and have a 2 daughters, which
showed us pregnancy is also another tricky situation when having diabetes!! I
want to make a difference in finding ways to manage Type 1 Diabetes even better
or perhaps even the cure so we can live a long happy and healthy life.

This will be my 6th marathon and every step if the way is
for Sarah and my children.