20
KIT
My diabetes kit
Rob Hewlett
I
met Rob Hewlett near his home
in Cambridge to listen to the
story of his diabetes journey.
I've interviewed many people
with diabetes and the time of their
diagnosis has mainly been a total
shock and many people have told
me how ill they were when they
were diagnosed. Hewlett's story is
particularly dramatic, but he's still
here to tell his tale.
He told me, "There was no history
of diabetes in the family at all when
I was diagnosed. I was a 27-year-old
man in a relationship. We'd saved to
go around the world and we set off
and made our way around Southeast
Asia before arriving in Australia.
By this stage I'd lost quite a bit of
weight, I was thirsty all the time and
peeing quite a lot. If I got any small
cuts they tended to get infected and
did not heal well. I explained it all
away, attributing it to the heat and
to drinking beer and to be fair I had
been fairly skinny before anyway. I
also managed to ignore what I would
now call a 'raging thirst.'
"I was in Australia a close friend of
mine walked straight past and didn't
recognise me. I was visiting family
there and I went to my aunt's house
where my niece opened the door
and started crying. My aunt was a
nurse and she took one look and just
said, 'you're not right'. She organised
for me to go to the doctors and get
blood tests done. It was going to take
a few days to get the results.
"As it happened, we'd done that
classic travelling thing and bought a
VW van. This was based in Adelaide
and as it was bought in my name
with my driving licence, I was the
one who had to collect it. As I did
not know was about to happen, I
thought I might as well go and get
it. I went and stayed in a hostel near
McDonald's where I could get a meal
with constant refills of coke, however
I ended up being sick. Again, I just
thought I'd overdone the coke - if
only on you then what I know now,
the coke was the worst thing I could
have done.
"Then my girlfriend rang up
because she'd been told my results
and she said, 'I'm sorry to tell you this
over the phone, but you are diabetic'.
"We figured out that the best
option at this stage was for me to
fly back from Adelaide to Brisbane
where I had family and my girlfriend,
Claire, who is now my wife. I got on
the plane and the next thing I knew I
woke up in intensive care in hospital
in Sydney. I'd collapsed on the plane
and gone into a coma. They landed
the plane as soon as possible to get
me to hospital as it was a medical