I think I forgot to write about my disastrous visit to a private school and how diabetes interfered to make it so problematic!
So, this visit took place in early November last year and it was for me to sit a couple of exams, give a presentation and have an interview for a scholarship to attend the sixth form. I was going there with absolutely no teachers from my school (so I had no backup for my diabetes, although my mum was on the end of the phone – but about 20 miles away), the visitees were completely responsible for us.
Towards the end of the 20 minute bus journey (owned by the school I was going to) my pump went onto smartguard. I tested and I was 3.3. Not a good start, but hey ho. I could deal with just the one hypo. I had Lucozade and decided to retest when I got off the bus even thigh that wasn’t the full 15 minutes.
When I retested I was 3.6. I thought – Excellent! I’m on my way up. We were told that we were going straight on a tour of the school and sixth form areas, which was spread over a really large amount of land for a school. So, I had another hypo treatment of lucosade to be on the safe side.
I was really wary of the fact I was on my own with no back up at that point, so I hoped it would be an easy hypo to sort out. No such luck. You should also know that I’m one of those people who hates to interrupt anything for my own needs, even if it is a genuine (occasionally severe) medial issue.
I tested 10 minutes later only a part of the way into the tour.
2.5.
I stared at it and panicked.
So, I had more lucosade and realised I would never be able to finish the tour without potentially collapsing. I excused myself out of the building and called my mum. Thankfully she realised I wasn’t thinking straight and was really in a bad state and in a sticky situation. She called the school and told the on-site nurses to find me urgently, telling them where I had been when I had called her.
I didn’t take my mum’s advice of staying put, telling the tour guide this (in my mind at that moment) was a more mortifying prospect than collapsing.
After a few short minutes, in a different building, the nurse found me and I had risen at that point thankfully. We walked back to the medial centre and I was there for almost an hour. My mum joined me, after rushing over with more hypo treatment.
The rest of the day was completely messed up by this hypo disaster. I had to take my scholarship exam in the afternoon (which turned out to be a blessing because in my presentation/interview they realised I should take the maths exam and not the science one! So maybe the hypo was a blessing in disguise?!), I had a separate sixth former for lunch and my mum spent the day in the village surrounding the school.
It was certainly an eventful day. And even after all of that drama, they offered me the scholarship! Not an ideal situation but if I hadn’t have had that hypo I would have taken the science exam before the presentation and I would have failed it miserably. So, lucky me, I guess!