 | 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.
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|  | Name: James Jones
Overview: James Jones left school at 14 and worked with his father as a groundsman before joining the RAF in the Second World War, then becoming a sheet metal worker. When he collapsed at the age of 48, his confused conversation led him to be taken to the Warneford mental hospital and he was given electric shock treatment before being diagnosed with diabetes. He was married to his childhood sweetheart for 52 years and has three daughters. He enjoys flying in gliders, and has an ambition to try wing-walking on top of a bi-plane!
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|  | Name: Shirley
Overview: Shirley left school at 16 and worked for the Inland Revenue until retirement. When she was diagnosed, her mother was very ashamed. Shirley looked after her parents until they died and then lived alone. She has had to cope alone with severe hypos, but says that living alone makes it easier to keep to a strict diet. She feels that her diet has made her healthier than she would have been if she hadn`t had diabetes. She has a low opinion of doctors, apart from a few consultants, but likes the group meetings held nowadays by specialist nurses.
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|  | 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.
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|
 | Name: Jeanette
Overview: Jeanette left school at 15 and worked in one of the first supermarkets in Malvern, where she met her husband. They married when she was 17 and had two children. During her second pregnancy, she had high glucose levels, but it wasn`t until a year later that she was diagnosed with diabetes and admitted to hospital for 5 weeks. She continued to use a glass syringe until c.2002. She feels that diabetes has caused her few problems, but she had to give up work because of osteoarthritis at the age of 44.
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|  | Name: Joan B
Overview: Joan began to lose weight when she was three. Her doctor had never seen a child with diabetes and so failed to act until she was critically ill. When she recovered, she had to weigh every slice of bread, but was allowed extra wartime rations of cheese, meat and fish. She has been married to Clive since 1962 and has one son. She would like to have worked as a children`s nurse, but was advised that she wasn`t fit enough, and she was would like to have had more children, but had three miscarriages, which she attributes to diabetes.
There is also an interview with Joan`s husband, Clive.
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|
 | Name: Kushira Hackett
Overview: Kushira Hackett`s mother was white and her father black – from Guyana. Her parents split up when she was 5 and her mother later married a Jamaican. After diagnosis, the hospital staff explained to her mother about portions and gave her scales for weighing food, but gave no explanations to Kushira. Her mother also gave no explanations, and she thinks this led to her rebellion against diabetes, and to her leaving home aged 16. She had a period of homelessness, but later gained a law degree and now lives happily in Birmingham with her partner and two children.
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|  | 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.
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|
 | Name: George Saunders
Overview: George Saunders was brought up in St.Kitts, worked for his father as a tailor, and came to England in 1958. Since recording this interview, he has received a lot of publicity, because his Birmingham workshop, where he worked as a tailor for nearly 30 years, has become part of a National Trust museum. After he was diagnosed, he was on tablets for about a year before changing to insulin. He is full of praise for medical staff, even though he ignores their advice when he thinks he knows best. He feels that his diabetes has caused him few problems.
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|  | 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.
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 | 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.
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|  | 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!
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 | 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.
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|  | Name: Mary Potter
Overview: Mary Potter`s daughter, Joanne, developed symptoms of diabetes in 1978, when she was five. Her GP refused to believe she had diabetes and Joanne nearly died. This traumatic beginning left a legacy of anxiety and anger. Mary noticed that another mother of a diabetic child was more laid-back than she was. She also noticed that when a niece was diagnosed around ten years later, there was much more specialist help and information available. Mary still sometimes accompanies Joanne to diabetic clinics. Joanne hates clinic visits because she feels that doctors treat her like a child and make her feel guilty.
There are also interviews with Mary Potter`s daughter, Joanne Pinfield, and with Joanne`s husband, Nick Pinfield.
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 | Name: John Browning
Overview: John Browning`s father was an army officer and John always assumed that he would make his own career in the forces. He was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 28, not long after getting married, and was invalided out of the army. He became a Conservative party agent and then a teacher. He still weighs his food and attributes his good health to his strict regime. He thinks one of the main improvements in his care has been to see the same specialist at each visit, instead of a different person every time.
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|  | Name: June Hill
Overview: June Hill had never eaten much sweet food and had always had plenty of exercise so her diagnosis brought little change and had no effect on her career as a teacher and then a nurse. She went on tablets in 1983, and was put on insulin in 1995, when she had a serious illness unconnected with diabetes. She took no interest in her own diabetes for many years until her diabetic mother became housebound. Then she began to inform herself about long-term implications. She is very fit and is enjoying her retirement.
There is also an interview with June Hill`s husband, Tony Hill
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 | Name: Grace
Overview: When Grace was diagnosed at the age of 15 her father was working for the Forestry Commission and they lived in a remote Suffolk wood. She was ill for months before diagnosis and thinks this was partly because they lived 4 miles from a GP and 20 miles from a hospital, and because her mother couldn`t face having another sick child after Grace`s sister died from leukaemia. Grace had early cataracts and was registered blind in her teens, but successful treatment throughout the rest of her life has meant that she has always had vision in at least one eye.
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|  | 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.
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 | Name: June
Overview: June`s husband, Charles, was diagnosed with diabetes at Barnstaple Hospital in 1935, when he was ten. After leaving hospital, he didn`t return for a check-up until 1957. He missed two years of school, as it was too far to walk and he had to look after his own injections, urine tests and diet, because his mother had seven other children. After June married Charles in 1946, his diabetes made little impact on their lives. He disliked blood testing and did urine tests until around 2004, when June did blood tests for him. June developed Type 2 diabetes twelve years ago.
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| Search returned 26 matches |
