 | 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.
Hits=5 |
|
|  | 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=4 |
|
|  | 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.
Hits=3 |
|
|  | 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=3 |
|
|
 | 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=3 |
|
|  | 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: Mr. Baghria
Overview: Mr. Baghria`s parents are Sikhs who came from India in the 1950s; his father worked as a galvaniser in a factory. His parents` aim was that he should have a good education, but his own dream was to become a truck driver. He married young and he and his wife saved to buy his HGV licence. Not long afterwards, he was diagnosed with diabetes and his licence was revoked. He appealed and managed to get it back, on condition that he had a yearly medical - and he has been driving all over Europe ever since.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Colin Dexter
Overview: Colin Dexter was diagnosed in the same year that his Inspector Morse novels began to be shown on TV, after his wife recognised his symptoms and urged him to see his GP. He was admitted to hospital immediately and put on an insulin drip. He sometimes finds it a bother to take all his insulin and blood-testing equipment with him on his travels, but doesn`t otherwise allow diabetes to dominate his life. He continued to be a `very big drinker indeed` until 2004, when he gave up alcohol altogether.
Hits=2 |
|
|
 | 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.
Hits=2 |
|
|  | Name: Clare
Overview: Clare was brought up in a remote Cornish hamlet. Although she developed Type 1 diabetes around the age of 5, she was not given insulin until about 4 years later and was instead kept on a near-starvation diet. She rebelled for many years and only began to take care of herself after she was registered blind in 1984. She went on to gain a second BA, MA and PhD and is now a university research fellow. She has been helped by coming to regard her lack of sight as `an issue around social equality as opposed to a medical issue`.
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: 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: 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=2 |
|
|  | 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=2 |
|
|
 | Name: Allan Jones
Overview: Allan Jones` father was a miner with six children. They had little money but had to pay for insulin and equipment until the National Health Service was created in 1948. They couldn`t afford cotton wool and re-used needles until they were blunt. When Allan was 15 he got a job as a messenger on the railways but had to pass a medical before being promoted. He feared he would lose his job if his diabetes was discovered, so took with him a sample of his brother`s urine! He passed the medical and worked happily on the railways for 30 years.
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=1 |
|
|
 | 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=1 |
|
|  | 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=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: 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=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: Ann
Overview: Ann came to England in 1945, and was diagnosed when the matron at her boarding school found her drinking the bath water. Her mother had worked as a nurse at Kings Hospital, London, and took her daughter there, to be treated by R.D. Lawrence (co-founder of the British Diabetes Association, now Diabetes UK). She has memories of being made to go into a hypo, of glass syringes, thick needles, and embarrassing urine tests. She worked as an occupational therapist, and brought up two children alone. Despite eyesight problems, she now makes a living as an artist.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | 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.
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: 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: 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: Nick Pinfield
Overview: Nick Pinfield`s wife, Joanne, has had diabetes since she was aged five in 1978. He met her around 1998 at a giftware factory - where he was soldering pewter and she was painting it - and they married in 2002. They now run a limousine business and their decision not to have children is unconnected with diabetes. Unlike Joanne`s mother who saw her have severe hypos, Nick has only known Joanne since she has been managing her diabetes well and it has had little effect on their lives together. However, he does accompany her to all medical appointments.
There are also interviews with Nick Pinfield`s wife, Joanne Pinfield , and with his mother-in-law, Mary Potter.
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: Clive B
Overview: Clive`s wife, Joan, was diagnosed with diabetes when she was four years old, in 1945. They married when she was nearly 21 in 1962 and had one son. Clive knew little about diabetes when they married but felt it was essential to learn, because when Joan had a hypo, she needed his help to recover. He has always been on the look-out for warning signs and has also supported her through miscarriages and depression. He thinks that coping with diabetes has strengthened their marriage. Had he known what he was taking on, `I`d still do the same thing again tomorrow`.
There is also an interview with Clive`s wife, Joan B.
Hits=1 |
|
|
 | Name: Madge
Overview: When Madge married Roy in 1951, he`d had diabetes since 1942. He didn`t tell people about it and when she met him he was driving a mobile shop, having previously driven a lorry. He went on to drive a concrete mixer, involved in constructing the M1. He had serious hypos throughout their married life and she woke each night to check he was all right. She rarely had an unbroken night`s sleep until he changed insulin a year ago. He began to lose his sight in 1972, so she did all the driving, and eventually also guided him about.
There is also an interview with Madge`s husband Roy
Hits=1 |
|
|  | Name: David
Overview: David`s father was a Fijian doctor whose work took him all round the Fiji islands. David himself managed a small post office before coming to England in 1959. His wife and baby son joined him later and they had six more children. He had converted from Methodism to his wife`s Catholicism and his children attended Catholic schools in Birmingham. He worked long hours to support them, as a telecommunications engineer, until he retired at the age of 60. He used to dream of returning to Fiji but now feels he couldn`t leave his children and grandchildren.
Hits=1 |
|
|
| Search returned 53 matches |
