Won't be lonely on my travels: meet Diabetica

I was a fearless 23 year old when I packed, then re-packed too many times, my enormous rucksack preparing for my first overseas trip, well, not counting emigrating to Australia 15 years prior. My girlfriend and I practised hoisting these monsters onto our slight respective shoulders. Seemed easy enough in her front lounge-room. Palled quite quickly getting on and off trains and finding accommodation in England and Europe. On a four week trip around France, Germany and Italy, even the pages of a bulky Europe on $15 a day guidebook were unnecessary weight. Disposed of them as we went. Paris, rip. Nice, rip. Florence, rip. And so on. All the way back to England for our flights home - by which stage my travel companion and I were no longer on speaking terms.

Wasn't much fun, that trip. My chain-smoking friend and I tired of each other's company after a couple of weeks but we still had to do another four, often sharing a bed. We froze, given we were Australian  teachers taking advantage of our long summer holidays which of course coincided with the bleakest winter weather on the other side of the planet. I picked up a rotten virus sleeping ten to a room in a pension in Florence. But mostly I was desperate for big Al, whom I hadn't planned on when I'd planned that trip. Decided that in the future I wouldn't travel anywhere without him.

There were actually three of us on my next trip to Europe: Al, me and another demanding passenger who needed constant attention. Why not personify Type 1 diabetes? I'll call her Diabetica. She and I had started our life-long journey together three years earlier. She still likes to dominate and if she doesn't get her way she makes me pay. Had to learn to do it her way, as I discovered when I regained consciousness in the back of an ambulance on our first night in London. Diabetica and I had become accustomed to how she'd behave during my workaday Australian routine. Didn't know that she'd go berserk trying to fathom the effects of too much exercise and an eight hour time difference. You learn these things as you go.

I started writing a journal on 1st April, 1985. I'm glancing at it now. Everything was blissful and beautifully handwritten for the first page and a third. My aunt and uncle had met us at Heathrow and later dropped us at our hotel - where our booking had gone missing but we were accommodated anyway. We wandered around London, bought a leather jacket for Al (subsequently stolen in the south of France but that's another story.) We ate, we drank. I wrote that 'my dogs were killing me'. Must have walked miles. Later the same day we met some Australian friends for dinner then back to our hotel. 'Fell into bed at approx. 9.30 absolutely jiggered,' I wrote. 'Slept very deeply until I woke up at the desperately hypoglycemic stage...I grabbed one of the sweets at the side of the bed and woke Allan.' Won't detail the feeling of losing consciousness and having a seizure, but even without rereading what I'd written back then I can still remember the terror of fading out and not being able to stop it. (Later it led to nearly 7 years of panic disorder, but again, that's another story.) I've glued the admissions card from University College Hospital, London onto page 3 of that first journal. In my attempt to analyse what led to that hypoglycemic episode, the only one requiring medical intervention in my 38 years of living with my Type 1 twin, I've recorded the number of 'portions' I ate at dinner -  that's how we did it back then; 1 portion = 10 grams of carbohydrate. I'd injected an evening mix of 16 units of Actrapid insulin and 14 units of Protaphane insulin. I finger-prick-tested my blood glucose using a bulky Glucometer and had three injections - using plastic syringes - a day. It's still complex managing my condition, my constant passenger, my occasional succubus, but living with diabetes today is a free-wheeling cycle down a gentle slope compared to life back then. Still, our six month trip around Europe in an orange VW combi-van remains one of the most delicious experiences of my life.

Said I wouldn't travel without Al again, but Diabetica and I, are travelling alone together to France next week. Al gets a break, but of course I'm stuck with her. Nowadays, with the help of an intuitive insulin pump that delivers insulin according to the data from a subcutaneous Continuous Glucose Monitor, I can mostly work out what Diabetica is doing . But mindful of what she might do out of her comfort zone, much of my carry on luggage will comprise of countable carbohydrate snacks to keep her tempests at bay. I've even bought a silicone band for my wrist pronouncing that the wearer is 'Diabetique' - sounds almost romantic - should capricious Diabetica decide to attention-seek in the streets or subways of Paris.

Actually, if I drop my tedious metaphor the fact is that I'm travelling solo. I haven't been this excited since I had my second baby, 31 years ago. I'm going to Aix-en-Provence to do a two week intensive language immersion home-stay with a French teacher.

Should be interesting.