Over the last week I have been recording my friends and asked them 6 questions about type 1 diabetes. a lot of the responses were similar, there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of nervous laughter. All of the people i interviewed i see in my day to day life and have been a part of my university life of three years. The most interesting thing I got from doing these recordings is that everyone seemed to laugh at their answers. They were guessing. They were unsure of the correct answer. This is strange when thinking about it as that is in a sense what diabetes is metaphorically like. I know being diabetic is not a laughing matter but I don’t want my piece to be completely serious. If my friends are in the audience they need to be entertained somehow. I can’t just fire facts at them and lecture them, I need to engage with them and the public in ways they will find interesting, amusing yet serious. I am however going to have to pick the answers I think best sum up each question, from the complete wrong answers, (what is type 1 diabetes? it’s when you eat too much chocolate), to funny answers and also some which are very accurate such as the detailed descriptions from my biology student friend.

No one would know what to do if I collapsed on the floor it seems, so I may just cut out that question. I’m not here to give a first aid course in a performance, but I want the audience to know that there is a lot more that diabetes involves so they cant “just give me sugar” or “inject me” if I was to collapse.  “Call an ambulance” which is the correct answer is also an annoying answer, even my housemate of 2 years and best friend doesn’t really know how to look after me, not that I would expect her to be able to save my life because I almost walked away from a diabetic I saw collapsed in a shopping centre- thinking he was just a drunk man on the floor. It’s scary. No one really understands what goes on inside my body. Not even I do. I can only take my life experiences and facts and try to tie them all together to create a performance.

1- Dom- one of my closest friends and co performer.

2- Mary- another good friend who is also my co-worker at a b&b.

3- Rosie- another good friend who i used to exercise with once a week.

4- Lily- another type 1 diabetic friend.

5- Harry- a friend who i am not as close too but have been on nights out with.

6- Nick- performed alongside Nick in peter pan for a whole month in an intensive christmas show.

7- Joe- a third year Biology student and friend

8- China- Best friend and Housemate of 2 years.

9- Tom-  co performer and in my solo performance class.

What is Type One Diabetes?

That’s when your pancreas doesn’t do stuff. You don’t produce your own sugars or insulin or something like that so you have to inject it.

Urm omg, I know that there is 2 types, I think type 1 is the hereditary one but I don’t know in all honesty

Urm where you need a lot of sugar… wait no… I’m trying to think what you do… urm you have low blood sugar so you have to have a lot more sugar than normal people?

Type 1 diabetes is… I dont know how to describe it. Its er its er like a condition, its er a disease I suppose that like you can have for the rest of your life unless they find a cure… it’s a disease that affects our everyday life.

It’s something you can’t eat chocolate with but I’m not really sure

Urm Type 1 diabetes is a disease urm and it’s to do with sugar and it’s the type that is not super dangerous .

Type one diabetes is where the beta cells of the….in the pancreas are deficient in either recognising insulin or producing insulin there’s an inbuilt intolerance which is brought on its irrespective of diet or health or lifestyle and requires treatment such as insulin injections on a regular basis to maintain blood sugar levels.

Erm its when the pancreas stops creating insulin that’s all I know.

Where your pancreas doesn’t work properly and it doesn’t produce enough insulin so you have to have insulin artificially inserted in you

“…before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she shall prick her finger – on the spindle of a spinning wheel – and DIE”! (Maleficent)

Studying Sleeping Beauty in my other module Staging the Supernatural makes me always think about pricking my own finger and bleeding. When Aurora pricks her finger she is put under a curse and sleeps for 100 years. when i prick my finger i do not sleep for 100 years, which would be nice and relaxing, however when i prick my finger it results in my every day curse- the curse of being diabetic. I can never rest. I have to prick my finger every day, whenever i eat carbs, or feel symptoms of being hypo or hyper, so at least 4 times a day i would say i prick my finger.

The use of the blood vessel type lights filling the room will also add a sense of a curse. I am under the control of a disease.

After going to the gym and eating lunch i decided to test my sugar levels again to check what they were. they were 18.3… it warned me that my levels were over my target range. I then input the amount of carbohydrates i had eaten, i guessed 20 carbs for an apple but who knows really the exact amount?

if my levels were perfect ie 8.0mml and i hadnt been to the gym and i ate an apple that was 20g of carbs i would inject 2 units of insulin as i believe my machine is set up as 1 unit to every 10 grams of carbs.

Due to me going to the gym in the morning i then told my machine that i had done exercise which has been set up to minus 10% of insulin, due to the risk of a delayed sugar level drop later in the day, which normally happens. Even the morning after i can have low sugar levels as an on set from exercise the day before. It then told me to give myself  2 units of insulin. It calculates this by my body’s sensitivity to how many units of insulin bring my sugar levels down by what, and how long it takes my body to react to the given insulin. I’m pretty sure its all just an estimate. my life is one big guessing game. In my performance i want the audience to understand not just how i test my sugar levels and control them but mainly why. what happens if i don’t test and don’t inject?