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Belfast Live
National
Shaun Keenan

Derry woman living with diabetes explains how parents spotted early signs of condition

A woman suffering from diabetes has urged people who have potential symptoms to get checked out by their GPs after living with the condition for more than four decades.

Jacqueline Campbell, 46, was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was four - back in the 1970s.

The Derry woman said her parents "had concerns" after she began showing early symptoms but she wasn't taken to a doctor until her late grandfather informed her mum and dad about her excessive drinking habits.

Read more: Parents devastated after son's 'fever' was rare blood cancer

"I was in my grandparents' house as a child and it was only when my grandad told my father that I had downed four pints of water, one after the other.

"It only reaffirmed what my mother and father were already thinking because they noticed that I was beginning to lose weight and I was sleeping a lot more than I usually would have.

"But what made them go and get me checked out by a doctor was the incident with the water. That was one of the first real tell-tale signs that something wasn't right.

"The signs were there, and while they weren't there that long, they were there enough that people could notice them.

"The losing of the weight, going to the toilet, and sleeping more regular were all there but they weren't as severe as the fluid intake."

Type 1 diabetes causes the level of glucose (sugar) in your blood to become too high.

It happens when your body cannot produce enough of a hormone called insulin, which controls blood glucose.

People diagnosed with type 1 diabetes have to take insulin every day to keep their blood glucose levels under control.

Jacqueline told MyDerry that she believe it was a "blessing in disguise" that she was diagnosed at a young age.

"The benefits for me having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes from four-year-old is that I haven't known any different.

"My mother and father knew that I wasn't allowed to eat certain things and that I had to keep my glucose levels under control so the way they saw it is that if it wasn't in the house then I couldn't eat it.

"That has always been the way for me, although I don't think my brother and sisters were too please about it," she laughed.

"But I do think that how I was lucky in one way. I have known people who have got Type 1 diabetes in their later years and sometimes they really struggle to get a grasp of it or get their head around it.

"People are being asked to change their lifestyle from the way they used to live and that is really hard going if you've never been asked to do that before."

Jacqueline is also part of the Brandywell and Bogside Health Forum's Diabetics Together programme.

The programme, which runs every Tuesday and Thursday, gives those with type 1 or type 2 diabetes the fitness and nutritional support that they require.

"It really is a big help to people with diabetes," Jacqueline added. "There wasn't, and still really isn't, a lot of support there within the NHS when it comes to diabetes. That is just my opinion but that was the Diabetics Together programme that stepped in and gives us that support.

"I wasn't even going to join the programme, to begin with, because I didn't see why I would have any use for it. I have been suffering from diabetes for over four decades but people kept encouraging me and I am so glad that I did join.

"We learn from each other in that group and we are able to talk to each other about what we are going through. You can't get that anywhere else and that's why I highly recommend it to anyone."

Read more: Mum's desperate plea to secure treatment against crippling condition

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