type 1 and type 2 diabetes

one of the most common things i notice when having type 1 diabetes is that not alot of people no the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes and no niether of them is a good type of diabetes. if i got a new pancreas everytime someone said to me " you dont look fat enough to have diabetes" or "can't you just get rid of that with diet and excercise" i would have cured alot of diabetic :) haha!

type 2 diabetes is most prevalent in australia making up almost 90 percent of all patients for us other 10 percent its a complete different story!

When diagnosed the doctors explained how i had type 1 diabetes a autoimmune disease where my immune system attacked my insulin producing cells, leaving my body with no insulin i have to inject my insulin through needles. although still unsure of what causes diabetes environment and genes play a factor in the trigger on type 1 diabetes.

however in type 2 diabetes lifestyle factors play a much greater role, lack of diet and obesity. type 2 diabetes can be reversed in most cases with health management. i no i would do anything to reverse my diabetes but unfortunately i am a type 1 diabetic. there is no cure for type 1 diabetes as of yet but with your help more money can be raised, we are getting closer every day :)

i hope this has made things a little bit clearer for you all. 

TAKE CARE xxxxooooo

 

First of all my name is Joanne Louise Weston i am a type 1 diabetic, i was diagnosed 6 years ago,

as many of you have heard before im sure insulin is not a cure it is a treatment. i wonder how many of you are actually aware of this its my 6th year this October of having type 1 diabetes and i am still being faced with the same questions almost every day 

" why did i eat so much sugar?" and " how many months will i have diabetes for?" " do you have the bad type or the good type?" the list goes on and on, i do not mind answering your questions i love making people aware but when you are like me trying to make sense of why this happened those questions sometimes become offensive and  when you see me injecting myself with a needle do you always feel the need to make a 'junkie' comment its hard to make yourself feel like everyone else when you live on time, time is something i can never lose track of.. its a life and death situation for me. diabetes the invisible disease i look fine on the outside but it is a battle on the inside sometimes. Helpless? this is one word i can use to describe how i feel on my bad days, diabetes can easily make you feel helpless, its a weird emotion one that hurts you so much mentally and emotionally that your body responds to it, its a ache  and a hurt that haunts your heart the battle with my diabetes is sometimes never ending no matter what i do sometimes it just isn't enough. i could on to tell you my struggles and all the tough challenges i face day to day but it would never end  our diabetes is OUR LIFE and like our life it goes on.. diabetes goes on it goes on through each and ever day and every night, it is the heartbeat of my life, if you stand in front of someone, someone you love even you cannot hear there heartbeat but it is important and its always there whether you see it or not, being a diabetic means it takes effort to keep that heart beating every minute of every day we work to keep those hearts beating. with all this aside you can achieve anything you want and be anyone you want to be as long as you keep your head high, its easy to feel alone and in the dark with your disease but you are not alone, the olympics are here again this year and it is always a inspiring time for me, for me because i take the time to look deeper into our athletes like the many athletes who have type 1 diabetes and manage to compete at a

 elite level. 

this is Missy foy she is the only diabetic runner to qualify for the Olympic marathon trials she is a inspiration :) you can all do anything you put your mind to and remember you are not alone

   

JDRF are an amazing organisation they help people raise money for diabetes with different charity events and provide people with ana amazing amount of information on type 1 diabetes! don't ever stop believeing because one day there will be a cure to the people who arent aware of diabetes do some research and save your judgmental looks until you no the facts and to those who want to donate jump online and donate its for a great cause 

my few months in perth turned to almost 2 years, and i was doing great i really was i still cried myself to sleep at night but this is still normal my life was coming together i had met a boy Thomas blair, we were together for almost two years i believe he had come to rocky and met my family and all. it was perfect :) until i started on the alcohol again, i started flipping out again i would wake up in the middle of the night and start hitting him i thought it was them again i ran away from him and hit him and screamed at him and he stuck by me through it all but i couldn't do this to him, at that point i knew i was better off alone trying to put my past behind me was stupid, not before i had dealt with it all properly, running away did not help entirely. i left Thomas and moved back to my family it broke my heart it really did but i knew he was better off how could i put someone through that, and now he has a beautiful gf and is extremely happy and i am happy for him if i didn't do what i did he wouldn't have let me go and i needed him to let me go no'one deserved that and if there ever was going to be the right guy for me it wouldn't be like that. it was only a few weeks back here and i met Matthew Henry Ross and i no it sounds wrong because its so soon after leaving the guy i thought was the one but like i said i would no how i felt if i was ever going to be happy, and this was it, we didn't do anything for ages and it felt so right i felt so so safe! not that i didn't feel safe with thomas but this feeling was different it was like i was fighting my past for so long and all of a sudden it didn't matter anymore. me and matt have had and ups and downs but it has always been him and i don't think that will ever change, everything about us is perfect not like cliche perfect because boy do we have fights and days where we both are so frustrated with each other but its so real, he doesn't try make it perfect he just does what he feels and i have doubts but deep down i no, its easier for someone who has gone through so much pain to understand the opposite of it. and that's exactly what i have when im in his arms.
We do not talk about what happened but he is always there if i need to, it hasnt really come up until recently the police wanted me to go over my statements and it was put back on the news and i can tell it breaks matts heart deep down. but i no i have him forever.
 

the mental ward.

wow i thought i was better but the minute my family and friends said there byes as i went inside i turned into this person i didnt no and when i look back now i don't understand that person at all. they took me into a room and weighed me and put all my insulin in the fridge locked away checked all my bags took everything sharp or dangerous off me the nurse i remember said
" what are you doing to yourself" rolled her eyes and walked me to my room, i was in the far end room down the end of a long hallway, the first thing i noticed was the think positive notes posted to almost everything, i laid in my bed and cried myself to sleep the next few weeks were all the same thing i slept and cried and wrote in my diary and that was about it, i wasn't eating, my friends were eating my food and bringing me a pie because i remember it was easier to bring up a pie then the food they fed me, i was a complete mess i had never seen myself so down before, i looked in the mirror each day for the first week and i hated myself, how could the actions of someone else cause me so much self hate for myself, all of a sudden this problem wasn't just that i had been raped it was now personal, i thought i was fat so i didn't eat i didn't wanna talk because i thought everyone had it out for me. i had a lot of self mutilations in the period i was in the institution, i had repeatedly burnt the tops of my legs with my hair straightener, i tried to cut fat off with the blade of my pencil sharpener and i had cut my wrists with my diary paper. i am not writing this to give anyone ideas or for anyone to think this is acceptable because it is not, but the pain i went through led me down this dark path, we often went on walks to the water tower with the counselors it was meant to help us open up, i felt nothing. eventually i sat down and spoke with someone about it all our session went for hours and i cried and cried and cried. it was like a tsunami of memories for me and it hurt more then ever to have them washed back into my brain all at once. that afternoon i was released and sent home. i felt betrayed all over again. i felt that they gained my trust i spilt my heart out and instead of receiving help i was sent back into the place where there was no limits to what i could do to myself, at this point i truely was scared of what i was capable of. but when i seen my friends and family something inside me changed, i knew something had to be done, it wasnt as easy as just seeing there broken hearts and my pain and past go away, i sat down with my mother and we spoke about me moving away for awhile. we finally decided her sister, my aunty kathy in perth western australia seemed like a good idea. the plan was put into place almost immediate i had a week before i was to leave.

this would only be temporary a month or two to open my eyes to another world...

shoulda known better but i cant go back....

i had a new job at a pharmacy things seemed to be looking up, i was still a mess but now i could go for almost 2 hours without thinking of that night, it was a big deal for me, i was stil going out way to much, i had also been diagnosed not long before the rape with type 1 diabetes i was not looking after my health, because even though i had taught myself how to smile on the outside i knew that i didn't wanna face this for another 60 or so years, i was dealing but i was planning on ending it, it disgusts me to think i was going to do that, everyone tells me how selfish it is but they don't understand how it feels to not be able to go in any direction without a vivid memory, i had tried to overdose on insulin a few times and other times i just didn't take my insulin at all .. who knew that i could ever get to the point of ending my own life, i had these amazing friends but it didn't change the past, then i met a boy, i cannot talk a lot on this subject because of the court cases that i went through it would be wrong to talk about it in detail. but he was abusive towards me and i ignored it because i didn't no any better? i had been treated like scum that night and i think i had decided in my head this was the best i was going to get. my counselor says that 90 percent of rape victims end up in abusive relationships, what else could go wrong, this had tipped me over the edge my friends heard that he was hurting me and Steve and Cameron ran to his house to have words with him when he stabbed Steve in the chest 3mm from the heart, he was arrested that night but got away with a lousy 20 grand payment to Steve for damages, what a messed up justice system huh? this is when it all went down for me, i was constantly trying to hang myself i was overdosing and being taken to hospital almost weekly, one day i received a call from my abusive ex saying that i was worthless and scum and it was my fault Steve was stabbed, now for anyone who has been as broken as i was you will believe anything anyone says, i was home alone i fell to the ground in tears and tore my arms up with a kitchen knife, Ethan had been messaging me and as i wasnt replying he freaked out and ran to my house finally got in through the back door and seen what i had done and took me to the hospital, i was taken to the mental ward.

what was going to happen now, why did he have to find me ....

part two of my nightmare.

i didn't wanna deal with what had happened after all the tests and police statements, it was overwhelming, the police were picking me up from work and we were sitting at the front of schools to see if i could remember them, see when the police sirens scared them away, they left DNA inside me but not enough to find them, the stupid part of the law we aren't allowed to take DNA samples of people when they get there license its

 ' invading their privacy' therefore they did not find the two monsters, but within 75 years if they do anything and have DNA taken it will come up on the computer straight away, but is that good enough really? this invasion of privacy?? how stupid they shouldn't be doing anything wrong where the police would find their DNA what about my invasion of privacy?? i shut myself in a shell once the police said they had done all they could do i sat at home i quit my job and i remember crying constantly, most the time to the point of making myself sick, i watched the story on the news and i seen my story on the front page of the paper and it was unforgettable the pain it brought back instantly, i have never felt this embarrassed, betrayed, broken? i could go on with my millions of feelings at the time but nothing made sense, how could this happen to me. at that point i thought it was it for me there was no coming back from this? i just couldn't see it ever going away, it was there every moment of every day, i couldn't sleep, i couldn't even walk through a shopping fair without smelling the smell of those monsters, everything was a blur , to feel awkward around your own friends and family because you no they are tip toeing through conversations scared of saying the wrong thing. everything was different now. i met new friends some really close friends, Ethan,Cameron,Amanda and Steve when i met them i didn't realize how much of a impact they would have on my life, i didn't want them to no about what had happened to me but i was still broken and drinking my pain away, but really every time i had a drink it would replay in my head, and its easy to read that and think you understand but when i say replay i mean i was there again i couldn't escape and i would freak out and loose it so they did learn the truth about me and they didn't treat me any different they were just there to listen, they were the first people i ever completely spoke to about what happened, to gain trust like that again felt good at the time, things seemed to be piecing themselves together, i had a close group of friends which made me feel safe.

dear bloggers. <3

i no i haven't blogged for that long and from what you see my life is pretty normal right? i guess that just goes to show first impressions aren't everything, do not get me wrong i have my days and i like to blog about all my happy days as well its something i can look at when i am having a 'bad' day as my counselor would call it, i am going to blog a few separate blogs explaining what i went through i have bottled this up for a long time and i think people need to be more aware of how common and how often this actually happens to girls, noone deserves this, noone deserves to have their innocence taken away, i don't remember a time before i was scared, its like the moment i was betrayed it erased my memory of being a little girl, the little girl that trusted everyone, the little girl without a care in the world. Before i learnt the truth about life. Now when your growing up your taught stranger danger you are taught that there are bad people out there, but think back to when you learnt that? you never thought it would actually happen to you, and i no i never truely understood how my whole world could be turned upside down. 

It was almost midnight, it was the middle of winter and me and my girlfriends had all gotten together to go to a party, now the typical movie scene, my phone was flat i had a 50 dollar note which our payphones do not take so i began to walk hoping to waive a taxi down along the way. two guys approached me, i instantly trusted them i was scared walking alone i was not passing up on company, they said they were at the same party as me? i mean why wouldnt i trust them? i was so naive back then,

'we live on the other side of the park, come with us and you can ring a taxi from out house, you cant walk alone its dangerous out there' these are the words those monsters spoke to me which lead me into the park where my life was destroyed that night. that one night which i cannot let go of. it makes me sick now to think back that they were helping me only to have them betray me, change everything. the gory details which i mentioned in my last deleted blog i am not going to repeat as i said it was tacky, you dont need to no the details except i was left naked in the park screaming and covered in blood when the police found me. it was so cold it felt like with just a touch my skin would crack like ice, i held onto the ground  the whole world was spinning and i couldnt stop it, was i alive? was this a bad dream?

no this was real 100 percent real no matter how much i tried to wake myself up it wouldnt go away the pain and tears didnt stop, something i only ever seen on movies had actually happened to me how could i let this happen my parents taught me so well, one bad judgement had just changed everything.