I Heart Guts - The Pancreas! I have an ambivalent relationship with summer. I was never a great fan of it before my diagnosis at fifteen, my legs chaffed on the hot walk home from school to the rhythm of my homemade mix tapes, my puckered pale skin burned into red raw silk and hot days were veiled in gritty dust. Since my diagnosis summer now also brings unexpected hypos, as the heat spins my metabolism into overdrive, and sometimes unexpected sugar highs, as the sun silently breaks down my little vials of insulin into a pointless smelling liquid.
But one thing summer has always offered me is music, or specifically open air music. Childhood memories are filled with open-top drives along a shimmering Southend seafront to The Beatles Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, winding car journeys around France to the Spin Doctors and watching my parents dance on the beach to Van Morrison. In June 1994, just before my childhood twisted itself into adolescence, I sat illicitly in my brother's room trying to tan my legs whilst watching Channel 4's coverage of Glastonbury festival. The following year the BBC took up the gauntlet. It turned our living-room into an air-cool haven in which to watch PJ Harvey play the festival in her pink cat-suit in the heat of the day.
At night it was an excuse to stay up late and watch Jarvis Cocker sing to 175000 people, I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere /Somewhere in a field in Wiltshire.*
At night it was an excuse to stay up late and watch Jarvis Cocker sing to 175000 people, I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere /Somewhere in a field in Wiltshire.*
| A week earlier on June 17th 1995, a teenage daughter of a family friend had gone to seeBlur play Mile End Stadium. I was eleven and filled with envy and frustration that my age and friendships prevented me from singing my favourite songs in a London haze. | Later, when I was diagnosed, Peel was the only person with diabetes who I admired |
Instead I listened to my brother's tape of the coverage on repeat and sang Country House out of my friend's window on the evening Blur won their chart battle with Oasis. My friend looked on bemused.
By September 1995 I started to go beyond the Top 40. One Sunday night while bored in the bath I found myself listening to John Peel interview Pulp. As a DJ John Peel reassured me that it was not about where you listened to music, but how you listened to it. With an open unabashed enthusiasm.
Later, when I was diagnosed, Peel was the only person with diabetes who I admired. Even if he didn't have Type One, he showed me that there were people out there who had diabetes who weren't just sport stars, who won gold medals or climbed mountains. That some people with diabetes worked in the arts, drank red wine, didn't have perfect control but could still be another person's hero.
Throughout my early teens music was a domestic experience. Concerts, sessions, festivals were all meticulously recorded and watched from the confines of my house. I listened back to them from personal stereos and talked at my friends about them smothering their own tastes and interests with my unquenchable, sometimes alienating enthusiasm for first Britpop (aged 10-12), then Manic Street Preachers (aged 13-14) and then Beastie Boys, Air and Phoenix (aged 15-17). Music was (and remains) the friend who just got it, the friend who let me dream, the friend who would go anywhere with me, even if I couldn't go with it.
By September 1995 I started to go beyond the Top 40. One Sunday night while bored in the bath I found myself listening to John Peel interview Pulp. As a DJ John Peel reassured me that it was not about where you listened to music, but how you listened to it. With an open unabashed enthusiasm.
Later, when I was diagnosed, Peel was the only person with diabetes who I admired. Even if he didn't have Type One, he showed me that there were people out there who had diabetes who weren't just sport stars, who won gold medals or climbed mountains. That some people with diabetes worked in the arts, drank red wine, didn't have perfect control but could still be another person's hero.
Throughout my early teens music was a domestic experience. Concerts, sessions, festivals were all meticulously recorded and watched from the confines of my house. I listened back to them from personal stereos and talked at my friends about them smothering their own tastes and interests with my unquenchable, sometimes alienating enthusiasm for first Britpop (aged 10-12), then Manic Street Preachers (aged 13-14) and then Beastie Boys, Air and Phoenix (aged 15-17). Music was (and remains) the friend who just got it, the friend who let me dream, the friend who would go anywhere with me, even if I couldn't go with it.
I didn't want to let go now that my body had. | My diabetes developed during the midst of my GCSEs in November 1998. REM's Up became the soundtrack to my winter, dad buying it for me on the evening of my diagnosis. An album of quiet reflection and melancholic hope. |
The honeymoon period lasted exactly six months, by May 1999 I was writing diary entries about how: "We went to the Jackson Pollock Exhibition. I found myself caring more about the time I'd have to inject than the art." By the height of the summer and the discovery of heat-born hypos (that I had not been warned about), I wrote that I was: "depressed, I can't cope with it, my levels are bouncing like there's no tomorrow." Like most teenagers I angsted about fitting in, about set meal times inconveniencing my family, about the fact that holidays were being ruined by diabetes, about being uncool because I didn't want to drink and smoke weed, fearing that it would upset my levels. I didn't want to let go now that my body had. And all the time I pushed myself to stay on top of all my work and blood tests. I pushed myself as punishment, because I believed I wasn't tough enough, rather than forgiving myself because it was really tough. I still do this.
On the 15th June 2000 I completed my last exam. Being a History of Medicine paper, it was one of the few exams I enjoyed. Concerned with the impact of the plague, eighteen months of academic, physical and emotional stress culminated with me having to logically set out the affect disease and illness could have on people.
That afternoon I got a train to London on my own and listened to Phoenix's United.
The song If I ever feel Better rang through my heart. Lyrics that applied so easily to the hidden world of diabetes were lifted out of introverted melancholia by a disco beat that let me believe that one day, in summer, I could feel better.
They say an end can be a start/ Feels like I've been buried yet I'm still alive/ It's like a bad day that never ends/ I feel the chaos around me/ A thing I don't try to deny/ I'd better learn to accept that/ There are things in my life I can't control.
*Yes I know the studio version is Hampshire.
4and8 You can read more about 4and8's thoughts, rambles and histories of having Type One Diabetes and the continual plight to achieve sugar levels between 4 and 8 here and tweet her @4and8
On the 15th June 2000 I completed my last exam. Being a History of Medicine paper, it was one of the few exams I enjoyed. Concerned with the impact of the plague, eighteen months of academic, physical and emotional stress culminated with me having to logically set out the affect disease and illness could have on people.
That afternoon I got a train to London on my own and listened to Phoenix's United.
The song If I ever feel Better rang through my heart. Lyrics that applied so easily to the hidden world of diabetes were lifted out of introverted melancholia by a disco beat that let me believe that one day, in summer, I could feel better.
They say an end can be a start/ Feels like I've been buried yet I'm still alive/ It's like a bad day that never ends/ I feel the chaos around me/ A thing I don't try to deny/ I'd better learn to accept that/ There are things in my life I can't control.
*Yes I know the studio version is Hampshire.
4and8 You can read more about 4and8's thoughts, rambles and histories of having Type One Diabetes and the continual plight to achieve sugar levels between 4 and 8 here and tweet her @4and8
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