28
LIVING
MY DIABETES KIT
Hannah McCook
When I spoke with Hannah McCook
she was sitting in her car at the
Gleneagles Golf Club in Scotland,
hiding from the rain but about to go
out and play golf. By Sue Marshall
Hannah McCook is a professional golfer and an ambassador for
Scotland's famous Gleneagles Hotel and Golf Club. This means that
she represents the club while she's away playing. She feels she is
'very fortunate' because she can not only use the golf course but the
practice range and gym. She's been a Gleneagles ambassador since she turned
professional at the end of 2018, so the 2019 season was her first and - so far -
only normal golf season; the following year coronavirus hit and this year she's
had an injury she's had to deal with.
"As an amateur player, I guess effectively it is purely for fun and preparing
for whether or not you want to turn pro. The difference with being
professional is you can earn money through tournaments and sponsorship,"
says McCook, who first played golf at the age of six and then got her golf
handicap* at the age of 11. She is now 28 and says, "I have always been into
sport, all sports, as a kid, I particularly loved skiing but at the age of about 13
or 14 I stopped ski-racing and began to get better at golf. By the time I got to
my mid-teens I played for Scotland for the first time and started to wonder if I
could actually have a shot at making a career out of golf."
McCook was diagnosed in February 2002 at the age of eight and says that
she remembers it 'like it was yesterday'. She recalls, "I'd been feeling ill for
a few weeks I've been incredibly thirsty and always going to the loo. I was
drinking any liquid I could find,
even sweet things, which I know
now would have been adding to the
problem, but then I just remember
thinking 'it's liquid, I need to drink it'."
She had been sick pretty much on
the hour all through Sunday night,
so that by Monday her mother said
she could stay off school and she'd
take her to the doctors. "The doctor
made me do a urine sample and a
blood test and then they called an
ambulance. I was taken directly to
Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. All
I understood was that there was an
urgent need to get insulin inside me.
I remember being told I was diabetic
and I remember looking at my mum
and thinking, 'what does that mean?' I
was put on a drip and that was that."
Game on
Four days later, McCook left the
hospital with a handful of BD
syringes ('the ones with the orange
lids'), some vials of insulin and a
blood test machine. "I'm not sure
what my first meter was, but I know
I was soon on a One Touch meter. It
turned out that the strips were being
made in Inverness, later I even had
a chance to go on a tour there. I still
got a box of all my old kit at home
even though some of it I can't have
used in 20 years."
Another memorable part of
that day was the 'strangely good
thing', which was that one of the
paramedics had a son of exactly the
same age as McCook who had also
been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes
the year before. "In fact, although we
didn't go to the same primary schools
we ended up in the same secondary
school," says McCook, "His dad had
said to me on the day, 'diabetes will
live with you, don't you live with it.'
I remember that the four days in
hospital, as I started to feel better,
my parents and myself were learning
about what living with diabetes was