this is for you 🤍

I was 14 when I was diagnosed.

I know how scary that moment is, not just for them… but for you too.

The hospital.

The information overload.

The fear of “what does this mean for their future?”

My parents felt all of that.

And I felt something different.

I felt like I had failed.

Like my body had let me down.

Like I wasn’t “healthy” anymore.

So I tried to fight it.

I avoided carbohydrates.

I avoided insulin.

I told myself I was fine.

But I wasn’t.

I was exhausted, unwell, and struggling more than I let anyone see.

The hardest part wasn’t the diagnosis…

it was accepting that insulin wasn’t a failure,

it was support.

Now, 4 years later…

I’m living a life I once thought might not be possible.

I’m in Honduras, taking a gap year, travelling, growing, living fully.

And yes… still taking insulin every day.

Diabetes didn’t take my life away.

It just became part of it.

So if you’re a parent reading this, worried about your child’s future…

They can still travel.

They can still chase big dreams.

They can still live an incredible life.

And most importantly…

they don’t need to be perfect to be okay.

They just need support, patience, and time 🤍

Some days it feels really easy, other days not so much

Here are the pros and cons

PROS:
- there are no processed vegetarian foods so it can be a lot healthier
- in restaurants and eating places, things are usually made from scratch so you can ask for stuff to be made without meat
- there are lots of fresh ingredients available
- there are lots of fruit amd veg
- in the supermarkets you can get tinned and packeted stuff too
- it's a lot cheaper than buying meat

CONS:
- being vegetarian isn't widely recognised. Sometimes I've asked for food without meat and the response is "it's not meat, it's just sausage" 😑🤦‍♀️😂
- there isn't a huge variety of options. Usually when going out I get the same things - *pupusas, baleadas or anafre*
- you kind of have to prepare to not eat anything. Usually I just go out to restaurants for the socialising, not to eat food. I usually make and eat my own food first before going out.
- there is very rarely something marked as vegetarian on the menu, it's best to ask
- you might have to be a bit less strict about being veggie. Sometimes they will put chicken stock in something or fry stuff in animal fat or whatever and will just tell you it doesn't have meat in it. I usually just try to avoid anything looking, smelling or tasting like meat, but if it's not vegetarian (strictly speaking) I sort of try to ignore it because it's unavoidable unless you make all of your own stuff

Overall, I just try to do the best I can without limiting myself too much. I try and go by the mindset of "what I don't know won't hurt me"

* pupusas are these little round things that have cheese inside
Baleadas are tortillas with refried beans, cheese, cream (and sometimes other stuff like avocado, eggs and optional meat) inside
Anafre is basically like nachos or tortilla crisps that come with a bean and cheese dip

At the time, it didn’t feel real. I genuinely thought it was ok to be drinking two litres of water with every meal. I guess it was because I was gradually drinking more and more over like a month. When I was diagnosed, I actually felt relieved that it wasn’t something like cancer. In a strange way, I was grateful.

At first, I just did what I was told. I took it one step at a time. I didn’t overthink it, and before I knew it, I was managing everything on my own. It became part of my routine and something I just handled subtly.

But about two months in, things started to shift.

I was having hypo after hypo after hypo. It felt like I was living off dextrose tablets and Lift drinks. My insulin doses kept getting reduced… and reduced… until eventually, they couldn’t lower them anymore. I had to stop insulin completely.

This was the start of my “honeymoon phase.”

The doctors told me it wouldn’t last and that I’d need insulin again in days, weeks, or months. But those days passed. Then the weeks. Then the months.

And nothing happened.

A small part of me started to believe I had somehow beaten it. That maybe, somehow, I was the exception.

But as well as my hope, and all of my family's hope, I was feeling so much dread.

Every meal, I was questioning if this would be the mmoment that everything would change.

I was stuck between wanting this phase to last forever, but also wishing it had never happened at all. Because living in that constant uncertainty was exhausting.

The longer it went on, the bigger the fear became.

The fear of having to take insulin again, and feeling like I had failed.

Fast forward about a year and a half.

My blood sugars started rising again. And that’s when the denial began.

I didn’t want to go back on insulin.

I had spent so long avoiding it that it felt worse than when I was first diagnosed. This time, I knew what it meant. This time, I had built it up in my head for almost 2 years.

So I tried to fight it.

I ate less and less carbohydrates. I spent hours in my room jogging on the spot, trying to bring my glucose levels down. I forced myself to drink water constantly.

From the outside, it might have looked like discipline.

But it wasn’t.

It was fear.

I lost weight. I felt exhausted. My body was really struggling. But as an insecure 16-year-old girl, I told myself I was doing well. I convinced myself I was “fine,” even when I knew I wasn’t.

I wasn’t managing my diabetes anymore, I was avoiding it.

That denial lasted about six months.

Until one day, I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

I was sitting in a consultation, and they told me my blood sugar levels were too high. They said that I needed to go back on insulin and I broke down.

Even though I knew it was coming, hearing it out loud felt like failure. When I was off insulin, people told me “you’re doing amazing.” So when I needed it again, it felt like I had done something wrong.

Like I hadn’t tried hard enough.

Logically, I knew that wasn’t true. You can’t control Type 1 Diabetes like that.

But emotionally, it still felt like I had let myself, and everyone else down.

Starting insulin again was ten times harder than the first time.

But this time, I understood something I hadn’t before.

Insulin wasn’t the enemy.

It wasn’t a sign that I was “less healthy” or that I had failed.

It was support.

It was what my body had been asking for all along.

Eventually, I got my insulin pump and that changed everything.

For the first time in a long time, I felt free again because I didn'thave to deal with the fear and denial amymore.

There was no more waiting for the “moment everything changes.”

No more trying to outrun something I couldn’t control.

Just acceptance.

And peace.

Now, I’m living a life I once would have thought was impossible.

I’m spending a year volunteering in Honduras. I’m building a life that feels aligned with who I actually am, not who people expect me to be.

And diabetes is still part of that life.

But it’s just a part, not the whole story.

If anything, learning to manage it has made me stronger, more resilient, and more aware of what really matters.

Because having Type 1 Diabetes doesn’t mean your life becomes smaller.

It just means you learn how to live differently.

1. Not bringing backups incase the technology would fail

I had my insulin pump and was very happy with that, but I didn't really consider bringing insulin pens as a backup or bringing a spare insulin pump.

2. Not ordering extra kit for the full year.

The supplies I use in the UK can be different to those they use in other countries. Therefore, I would have to bring my whole year's supply with me in my suitcases... which did in fact mean I had a LOT of luggage!

3. Not considering the airport security

A lot of technology us diabetics use can actually be compromised by the security scanners. Things like my CGMs and pump cannot go through the scanners, so I needed to arrange my luggage so that it would be easy to remove these from my bag so they could get checked individually.

4. Forgetting that insulin can only be out of the fridge for 28 days

When travelling for less than a month, it can be fine, but having a year's worth of insulin, I had to figure out how to keep the insulin temperature-controlled whilst on the move, and also in Honduras where there are often powercuts!

5. Not getting Hidden Disabilities marked things

There is a sunflower symbol that marks hidden disabilities. This is recognised across many airports worldwide, and the airport staff were lovely and helped me without me even having to open my mouth because they saw the lanyard I was wearing.

6. Missing out on extra baggage

It is a legal requirement for the airlines to allow us type 1 diabetics an extra carry-on piece of luggage (as long as it only has medical supplies inside it). So it was definitly worth asking the airline I was flying with what their rules are on this.

7. Leaving behind extra supplies

I had considered bringing out a year's worth of supplies, which I did... but what happened if my suitcase went missing??? I split 8 months worth of kit between two suitcases (an extra 4 months just in case) so that if one suitcase went missing, at least I could last 8 months.

8. Not printing out a permission letter from my doctor

As much as this isn't essential, it really did give me piece of mind whilst going through security that I had this NHS letter explaining why I had to carry needles, non scannable items and at such quantity too!

And although I didn't think of any of these things... thankfully my mum did. Things would have been sooo much more stressful if she hadn't been so pepared, so I am very grateful that my trip went smoothly (for the most part) because of her.

Not as a dramatic longing to go home, but as a quiet feeling that I was losing parts of myself.

There was self-doubt, tears, and trying to run from my problems.

The homesickness increased as I felt like small parts of myself were slowly fading away one by one.

I think it was inevitable because everything in Honduras was completely different than what I was used to. My whole life had changed after moving abroad, and I was very good at adapting to my new way of life, but I started feeling less and less like myself. I did end up really missing who I was.

For example, I stopped all of my habits and routines I was used to, like working out every morning, going out for walks, cycles, a drive, meeting up with friends and family... things were just different.

I am the type of person who never feels bored - there is always something for me to be doing or thinking about, so when I was working non-stop, without my hobbies or anything, I did feel like I didn't have the time to do what I wanted to. I felt stressed, and I felt like I was losing myself.

But there were also some new things I had gotten used to, that I loved. For example, Spanish stuff. I was really enjoying listening to music in Spanish, and learning the language, but I also ended up missing my English songs, and it felt very bitter sweet. I wanted to just enjoy my time being here without missing what life was like before.

Sometimes when I would be in groups with people just speaking Spanish, I loved learning and feeling like I was progressing, but I never fully felt like I belonged or was properly relaxed -when i would try to join in the conversation, I would feel like I couldn't be sure that I hadn't misunderstood what they were talking about, and by the time I figured it out and knew how I could respond back, the conversation had already moved on.

I guess that is why I usually say that I am better in 1-1 conversations rather than group ones because I feel like I can actually stop and ask them what a word means, or to explain things in another way.

I wanted to be closer with my foreign friends too because they were very nice and we got on well, but I also didn't want to feel like I was wasting the opportunity to speak to natives. I didn't want to be that person who just lives their normal life when they get to a foreign country.

I also have this thing about me, where I feel like I am just so different from everyone around me. I often feel like I don't fit in with the people around me, and I have definitely felt that more intensely recently. And sometimes that makes me feel isolated from people, especially the friends and family that I have back home that I actually don't feel drained around.

There was one night where I was crying uncontrollably because I just felt so lost. I was looking at flight tickets to come back home, I was really just confused and didn't know what I wanted.

I was sick of feeling homesick.

I just wanted to feel myself again.

I felt guilty feeling homesick. I felt like I was being ungrateful for the wonderful experience I was having, but I realised that it is also good to feel appreciative of the world I come from too.

After a while into the homesickness, I found out something. I learnt that no matter where I was, I couldn't escape my mind, and I didn't want to. But knowing that helped me to just try to do small things to help me feel more like myself, because the worst thing that could've happened would be that I went back home and it wouldn't change how I felt. And I was scared of that outcome too.

I realised that homesickness wasn’t ingratitude.

It was a signal that I needed to reconnect with parts of myself I had neglected.

Missing home did not mean I was failing at living abroad, it meant I was human.

3 months after my diagnosis at 14, I started my honeyymoon phase and had to go completely off insulin for about 2 years because even the smallest amount would result in hypos.

After the initial 6 months of no insulin, my blood sugar started to rise and my brother was determined to keep me off insulin, so he basically just told me to do lots of exercise, strength building, eat super healthy and do health shots and all of that. And at first it was something that I wasn't convinced about, I just did it because he wanted me to - I was like 'yeah but I have type 1, not type 2 so that won't work' but then, my blood sugar levels started to lower, and I had another year and a half without insulin.

I'm not saying that it was or wasn't reversed. But I do still take insulin (4 years after diagnosis) but it does seem like there is a corolation between my blood sugar levels and how well I am taking care of my body.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 14, and at 17, I set off on my gap year to Honduras. I had never left Scotland on my own before, so it was a completely new experience for me. From planning, packing, explaining to the airport security that my CGM's couldn't be x-rayed… there were a lot of things I wished I knew before, and I had the mentality of “I'm fine, it'll all be fine” that really did stress my mum out!

Now, looking back at the preparation process at 18, I honestly don’t know how my mum and I did it! But we did, and we would love to share what worked for us so that other families don't have to be stressed out in this time.

I am still here in Honduras for another 3 months, and have dealt with powercuts, extremely high blood sugar levels because the heat somehow made my insulin ineffective, and lots more! So if anyone has any questions about my experience, I would love to get in touch with you!

Thank you for reading 😊