I got diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in August 2011. My father got it late in life, my uncle has had it since he was a child. The bad old days of urine testing strips and clunky insulins – so I suppose I am lucky. I am lucky on another front in that dad is a physician so I have an on call doctor who also has Type 1 so that’s about as lucky as you can get in terms of support.

But the learning is so intense I often stop and wonder “how the hell do other people do this without an on call doctor?”. Well I know now that this is how they do it – they read other diabetics blogs. The diabetes specialists seem to have a lot of research and clinical knowledge but they don’t know what its like to have it, to live with it, to not know what’s happening, to sometimes be completely and utterly at a loss as to what your body it doing and WHY!?

Sometimes the lack of understanding has been astounding. Getting “tut tutted” by dieticians for having sugar in my tea. Specialists commenting that I am testing my sugars too often (because the research says 4 times a day is sufficient so there must be something wrong with my desire to have SOME idea on what my body is doing). Two professors of endocrinology telling me completely opposite information about how certain elements of the disease work. Anyway…enough of the rant. This is not about that.

Hopefully this will help other diabetics who are pondering their own adventures. I will try to capture all the hints, tips, trials and tribulations of travelling from the tropics to the wastelands of Siberia carrying a years worth of insulin, needles and testing strips. Not to mention jubes, muesli bars and several emergency meals of dry oats…..

I wonder if they sell Weetbix in Cambodia…….