 | Name: Harriet
Overview: Harriet was diagnosed when she was 12, and loved Great Ormond Street Hospital, where she was treated until she was 17. Her grammar school couldn`t cope with her diabetes, so she left at 15 to do O and A Levels elsewhere, and eventually gained a Diploma in Fine and Decorative Arts. She has worked for the Tate Gallery and for a company that bought art for corporations, and has also run her own business, and worked in college and university administration. Her daughter was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 9.
There is also an interview with Harriet`s husband, Greg.
Hits=3 |
|
|  | Name: Francis Andrews
Overview: Dr. the Rev. Francis Andrews was diagnosed with diabetes on the day that war was declared in September 1939. He was the son of a doctor who`d worked as a medical officer in Flanders during the First World War. Francis also trained to be a doctor, and eventually became a consultant physician in rheumatology, having been advised not to specialise in diabetes. He married and has 6 children, 15 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild, none of whom have diabetes. He took early retirement to train as a Catholic priest, and was ordained in 1994.
Hits=3 |
|
|  | Name: Zin Cherry
Overview: Zin`s daughter, Emma, was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 10, in 1988. While Emma says that after the shock of diagnosis her parents were `really laid back,` Zin remembers a time of high anxiety. However, she managed to hide her worries from Emma and was supported for several years by a very reassuring Diabetes Specialist Nurse called Sally Strang. Emma is well and happy - and her mother`s only regret is that she sometimes spoilt her and didn`t pay enough attention to her sister`s feelings. Nowadays, Zin thinks that diabetes `doesn`t seem such a big deal at all`.
There is also an interview with Zin`s daughter, Emma .
Hits=3 |
|
|  | Name: Peter
Overview: Peter`s father was a professor and both parents were well-informed about diabetes after his older brother was diagnosed in 1945. They spotted Peter`s symptoms early and at first he only needed four units of Lente insulin to last 24 hours. He was educated at Oxford and worked in the steel industry for several years. He is now a management consultant and has few problems associated with diabetes. He has recently remarried, after being widowed in 2003, and has a daughter with diabetes who is `much more able to cope with disturbances to her daily routine than I am`.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Patrick Grogan
Overview: Patrick Grogan was treated at King`s College Hospital by R.D. Lawrence (co-founder of the British Diabetes Association, now Diabetes UK) and he remembers Lawrence commenting on the amount of carbohydrate at a hospital Christmas party. He has always kept to a healthy diet, has had lots of exercise as a machine-tool fitter and maintenance worker, and has had no diabetic complications. He`s a member of NHS Concern and the West Midlands Pensioners Convention and says that taking an interest in improving society is what keeps him going.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Victoria
Overview: Victoria`s father was a bank manager and she attended a private school and a grammar school. At 16, she developed an eating disorder after a boyfriend dropped her because she was diabetic, and at 25 she briefly rebelled against her diabetic diet. Otherwise, she feels diabetes has caused few problems and hasn`t prevented her from achieving her ambition of becoming a teacher. She thinks perhaps it did influence her not to have children, but she enjoys life with her partner, and is grateful for new blood testing equipment and other developments which have given diabetics greater freedom.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Fred
Overview: Fred`s family was poor and food was rationed in his early years: he remembers that a Mars bar was cut into slices to last 4 or 5 days! After diagnosis, he was told that `I had to control the diabetes rather than the diabetes control me` and has tried to follow that advice ever since. He lost his sight in 1978 and his second wife left him because she couldn`t cope. He began a successful business making garden furniture and now lives with his third wife, who is also blind.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Kevin Jones
Overview: Kevin Jones` father worked in a Welsh mine, then joined the Royal Navy and worked his way up from sick berth attendant to Lieutenant Commander. Kevin went to various grammar schools in Navy ports and left at 18 to train as an accountant. He worked for several large companies, unhindered by his diabetes, but has had more problems in recent years. In 2002 his leg was amputated, but he had great help from the Limb Centre and now walks and drives with an artificial limb. He loves jazz, and is pictured with a statuette of a jazz musician.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Emma Cherry
Overview: By the time Emma Cherry was diagnosed in 1988, GPs were familiar with childhood diabetes; hospital children`s wards were used to dealing with it, and Emma remembers a wonderful diabetes specialist nurse who showed her how to inject herself, and later called at her home twice daily to supervise her early attempts. Her schools, university, and colleagues at work all accepted her without any fuss, and she has never been made to feel `different`. Injections and blood tests are such a routine part of her life that she wonders how she would cope with a cure!
There is also an interview with Emma`s mother, Zin Cherry.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Erika Harding
Overview: Erika Harding`s father was Jewish and, in 1939, after the Nazis invaded Austria, she came by boat to England. When she looks at her photo of the thin, hollow-eyed little girl on the boat, she`s sure that she already had diabetes. After diagnosis, she was treated at King`s College Hospital, London, by R.D. Lawrence (co-founder of the British Diabetes Association, now Diabetes UK). She left grammar school at 18 and worked as a medical laboratory scientist until she retired. She and her artist husband have both played in many chamber music ensembles.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Philip
Overview: Philip was diagnosed aged 9 and considers that it`s better to get diabetes young, when the body is more adaptable. He attended a grammar school, and regrets that he often used diabetes as an excuse to miss school. He left at 16, but acquired more qualifications later and became a successful accountant. His diabetes was well controlled and caused little trouble for most of his life, until he began to get early morning hypos a few years ago. (He finds the term `hypo` unhelpful, since it`s used to refer to anything from a mild sensation to complete unconsciousness.)
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Tom
Overview: Tom`s mother, Gillian, is a single parent with Type 1 diabetes and Tom remembers that from an early age he was given his uncle`s phone number to ring, in case his mother had a hypo. In fact, he rarely had to do anything more than bring her some chocolate and it wasn`t until his sister, Natasha, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, that he began to learn about the disease. Natasha was six at the time and Tom was eleven: since then he feels that he has played a significant role in helping his mother to manage his sister`s diabetes.
There is also an interview with Tom`s mother, Gillian.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Lisa McGregor
Overview: Lisa McGregor was diagnosed shortly before starting secondary school. She spent two weeks in hospital, where she learnt to inject herself from the outset. She was given a `traffic light` book, listing forbidden and permitted foods, but didn`t follow the diet strictly. She injected herself twice daily for 20 years until moving to a more flexible regime, with four injections, in 2003. She describes it as a DAFNE regime (Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating), but hasn`t attended a DAFNE training course. She has had few health problems, but several frightening experiences as a result of hypos.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Beryl Smith
Overview: Beryl Smith first met children with diabetes when she was a student nurse and junior staff nurse at Birmingham Children`s Hospital from 1953 to 1957. She gave up nursing after she got married and didn`t encounter diabetes again until her own daughter, Catherine, was diagnosed in 1964, at the age of five. Catherine had so-called ‘brittle` diabetes, with frequent hypos – until she received two islet transplants in 2006/7. Beryl`s husband, David, developed Type 2 diabetes in 1983. At first he was on tablets, but was able to manage on diet alone after he lost four and a half stone.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Gillian
Overview: Gillian was diagnosed when she was 23, while working as a
journalist in London. At the age of 26, a consultant advised her that if she
wanted children, it would be a good idea to have them soon, because "you`ve
got to consider whether you`re going to see them grow up". Her partner
didn`t want to be a father at that stage, so she decided to be a single
parent and has brought up two children on her own. Her daughter was
diagnosed with diabetes in 1999.
There is also an interview with Gillian`s son, Tom.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Joan Wilson
Overview: In 1954, Joan Wilson was appointed as a Diabetes Specialist Health Visitor by Dr. Joan Walker of Leicester Royal Infirmary, who believed that patients would benefit from being ‘taught how to live their lives at home`. As a fully trained nurse, she could claim to be one of the UK`s earliest Diabetic Specialist Nurses. She visited homes and gave patients her own home phone number; visited schools and workplaces; liaised with district nurses and GPs and provided patient education at the Infirmary clinics. She was involved in consultant-led clinics in smaller towns and in helping GPs to set up clinics.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Greg
Overview: Greg was brought up in Chelsea, attended art college and got a job at the British Museum, where he met Harriet, who`d had diabetes since she was twelve. They married in 1978 and had two children, Dan and Grace. Harriet managed her diabetes well and Greg was not greatly involved, except during her pregnancies. He felt a greater weight of responsibility when Grace was diagnosed - first with diabetes, aged nine in 1999, then with epilepsy, aged ten. He says that he sleeps on a knife-edge: `You listen for every sound that`s happening in the night`.
There is also an interview with Greg`s wife, Harriet.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Margaret Elliott
Overview: Margaret Elliott`s newly-qualified local doctor diagnosed diabetes as soon as he walked through her front door - from the smell of acetone. Her family was poor but managed to pay for some medical care through a thrift club. Her parents did her injections for her and her husband did them after she married at 20. She was advised not to have children, but had 3 normal births and one caesarean. She attributes her good health to her husband`s care and a very strict diet. She has smoked 6 or 7 cigarettes a day since she was 14.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Margaret Williamson
Overview: Margaret Williamson was brought up in a village in North Yorkshire, the only daughter of an industrial chemist. Her mother was diagnosed with diabetes when Margaret was aged 2, and put on a diet of no carbohydrate with high quantities of insulin. When Margaret was diagnosed, a Newcastle consultant, James Spence, put mother and daughter on a more modern regime of high carbohydrate, which was weighed at each meal. After school, she went to business college in London, and worked as a secretary for directors of scientific institutions. She married a Cambridge research scientist and had two children.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Ron Craythorne
Overview: Ron Craythorne worked all his life in the family business of carpentry and joinery but, when he retired, there was no-one to take over, so now he and his wife give shows for charity, showing people round the old workshop and selling the products of his woodturning. (He carved and painted the wooden fruit and bowls shown in his photo.) He has played team sports all his life and diabetes has caused him few problems. However, he knows of the problems it can cause, from members of the diabetic group he founded several years ago.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Leon Cowdery
Overview: When Leon Cowdery left school at 15, his diabetes barred him from his chosen profession of sign-writing because he was not allowed to go up a ladder. He worked as a cycle mechanic and then, in order to avoid going to his parents` Seventh-day Adventist church, he took up floor-laying at weekends. This led him into the building trade and he has been going up ladders ever since! He designed the house in which he lives and, now that he`s semi-retired, he helps his wife with gardening and maintains four motorbikes from the 1950s.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Joanne Pinfield
Overview: Joanne Pinfield was only 5 when she had the frightening experience of waking from a coma in hospital and she has found diabetes frightening for much of her life. At school she felt isolated by being the only person with diabetes. She left at 16 to work in a pottery with a sympathetic boss who helped her not to feel ashamed of diabetes, but then reverted to hiding her condition during 12 years working in a factory. Her father`s death in 2001 prompted her to take better care of herself. She married in 2002 and runs a limousine business with her husband.
There are also interviews with Joanne`s mother, Mary Potter, and husband, Nick Pinfield.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Amy Yau
Overview: Amy Yau`s mother was a stenographer; her father was a health inspector, and they both came from mixed race backgrounds. Amy was born in Singapore, just before it was invaded by the Japanese, and was saved by the presence in her household of her Japanese grand-mother and great-aunt. She came to England to train as a nurse in 1960 and married a few years later. Her husband originates from mainland China and opened the first Chinese restaurant in Malvern. She helped out in the restaurant while her children were growing up and then returned to nursing.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Ian Vokins
Overview: Ian Vokins was diagnosed shortly after leaving junior school and when he joined his secondary modern school, he was treated `like an alien` and fed dried apricots at every school dinner for 3 years! He was bullied throughout his school-days and left as soon as he could, aged 15. After that, life `seemed to open up` and he `started learning` while he worked as a technician in fields as diverse as atomic energy, cryogenics, orthotics, packaging, and space science. His work often took him abroad, and he says that diabetes hasn`t stopped him doing anything, apart from flying aeroplanes!
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Simon Lawson
Overview: Simon Lawson`s father was 65 when he was born and his mother 44, and both died while he was in his teens. His unhappiness affected his public school education and he failed to get a place at Cambridge. Instead he worked at Sotheby`s in London and it was only after he married in 1971 that he obtained a degree and a doctorate – leading to his present work as an Oxford University librarian. He has warm memories of being treated by two eminent consultants – RD Lawrence and John Nabarro – and has always enjoyed knowing as much as possible about diabetes.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Lesley Prichards
Overview: Lesley`s daughter, Julie, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1978, aged nearly five, and she was in hospital for three weeks. Parents were not allowed to stay with their children, but Julie enjoyed hospital and decided then that she wanted to become a nurse. (She is now a Diabetes Research Nurse.) Meal times were rigid at first and Lesley and her husband still keep to those rigid times, though Julie does not. Later, while Julie was pregnant, she stayed with her parents whenever her husband worked nights - and Lesley feels that she`ll always have some involvement in her daughter`s diabetes.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Richard Fawkes
Overview: Richard Fawkes` father worked as a railway engineer in Argentina and Richard was brought up in an expatriate British community. His father died during the war, and he returned to England in 1945 to work in the family firm. He shared a house with his mother and sister for many years, but has lived alone since 1980. He has sung in amateur musicals, renovated houses, including the one in which he now lives, and painted 1,600 paintings, most of which he has sold. He is currently recovering from a heart attack.
Hits=1 |
|
|
| Search returned 44 matches |
