Malta, Iceland and Too Many Big Nights

In March of this year, I was pretty excited. I had booked two holidays, only a week apart and I was set to spend some time relaxing, drinking and good old fashioned getting up to no good! As a 23 year old Australian living in London, I lived the perma-holiday life that most other Australians did when they are here. I drank too much, I went out too much, and I worked long hours and survived on a staple diet of vodka, coffee and Marlborough lights.

I had just come back from Malta, and myself and 3 of my girlfriends had planned a trip to Iceland. We were going to swim in the Blue Lagoon, dance all night and chase Scandinavian totty all over Reykjavik. It was all looking good, except for one minor problem. I was feeling crap. I had been feeling crap for weeks. I was knackered for one thing. I had never been an athlete, but it appeared that switching my computer on at work seemed to necessitate a lie down. In Malta all I had wanted to do was sleep, and when I wasn’t sleeping I had dragging myself down to the shops to bulk buy Evian and huge amounts of food which I would then eat all myself, much to amazement of my friend who I was travelling with who had a theory that anyone who was putting away as much food and drink as me, would be required to fork out excess baggage for their a*se on the flight back to London, but that wasn’t the case either, I was losing weight. When I got back to London, people started asking me what me secret was (Atkins, Zone, Cabbage Soup??) I then had to become one of those annoying females who say ‘Well I’ve been eating like a horse and the weights just fallen off’ and then almost seeing them think ‘b*tch’ as they nodded.

I almost enjoyed horrifying my colleagues with my ability to down a 2 litre bottle of water in approx. 30 seconds and still be thirsty.

Everyone blamed my tiredness and thirst from too many big nights out. My weight loss was apparently due to the excitement of having too many holidays too close together and my excessive hunger was probably an insufficient diet catching up with me. Therefore, with my friends and colleagues diagnosis, and armed with my 3 favourite partners in crime I flew to Iceland.

But in Iceland, I could barely get out of bed, I had been there before and had always loved the place, but I couldn’t be bothered looking out the window to check the weather, let alone take my friends site-seeing. Still I was determined to get over ‘my tiredness problem’ so I dragged myself out and about with the girls. We did the sightseeing, we danced all night (admittedly I had to fight to keep my eyes open and had to elect not to speak as it made my mouth too dry) and we planned to hire a car and take a road trip along the South Coast to see the Ice lakes and Black sand beaches. On the day of our road trip, I woke up not remembering the last time I had felt so bad (a bold statement coming from someone who used to be out every night). I got out of bed and promptly threw up and then, and made a lot of noise blaming the lobster soup I had had for lunch the day before. I refused breakfast, hopped into the hire car and fell asleep. We stopped at the Geysirs which was an hour down the road, but I couldn’t get out of the car. We drove to a waterfall and as my friends stood in front of it and admired its beauty I slumped on the bonnet of the car and announced that ‘I wished I could drink the waterfall’. I then fell asleep.

The rest is kind of a blur. I remember a hospital in the middle of nowhere in the Icelandic countryside. I remember a doctor asking my friends lots of questions and I remember wishing he’d stop asking me so I could just sleep. He asked my friend if I had been exposed to SARS and I remember thinking ‘great that’s all I bloody need’ before falling asleep ……

…and waking up in the back of an ambulance. I was being taken to Reykjavik Hospital. My Icelandic is confined to ‘please’, ‘thanks’ and ‘2 vodkas with Diet Coke’ so I had no idea what was going on. I just knew this didn’t appear to be a good thing.

I was delivered to the hospital and have more vague recollections of nurses and doctors and my friends crying and being ushered out of the room. I remember wanting a drink, feeling panicked and deciding that maybe this would possibly not be the relaxing girlie week away i had planned.

It was two days before I finally really knew what was going on. I woke up and a doctor was sitting by my bed informed me that I was an ‘Insulin Dependant Diabetic’. ‘Oh is that all’ I remember thinking and then felt relieved. ‘So how long will I have to take tablets, to fix that’ I asked. ‘Will I have it for ages?’ ‘Can I go back to work next week?’

The Doctor looked a little horrified for a while and then proceeded to explain what was going on. That I had had severe Keotoacidosis, that I had almost died, that tablets weren’t quite going to cut it, and No! There would be no work, next week, or the week after for that matter.

I couldn’t leave hospital and go back to London until I was cleared to fly so I tried to set my recovery on fast forward. I loved Iceland, but I wanted my own bed in London and to get home, and register what was going on. The stay in hospital was not as bad as you’d expect. Not too many Australians end up in intensive care in Iceland so I was spoilt by all the nurses and had the benefit of the odd good looking Scandinavian doctor sticking their head in to check on my progress, (even if I wasn’t dressed for the occasion). My friends visited in bearing moisturisers and hair products to try and repair some the damage dehydration had done to my body. One of the girls stayed on with me and eventually I was cleared to fly back to London. Where I am now.

My mother flew over to be with me. I took 3 weeks off work when I got back. I have stopped going out every night and have given up the ciggies for good. I feel better than I have in years. It's only six months on and I’m still learning. I still slip up and there are still plenty of things that I am trying to understand. But in the end, it’s no big imposition on my life. I do everything I used to do, I still travel and since being diagnosed, have been to Spain, Sweden, Amsterdam and an ill advised weekend in Blackpool. I give the disease the curtsey it is owed and do everything in my power not to exacerbate it, and in the end I’m left with a better life style because of it and of course, a pretty crazy diagnosis story to tell at dinner parties.

Melinda