Changes

On the night of Thursday 29th September/ the morning of Friday 30th October, after just returning from a 10-day trip to Greece, I was hospitalised and subsequently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

I won’t go into the details, but I was in a bad way when I was admitted and had to stay in hospital for 4 days. Essentially, without urgent medical treatment, this condition I had would have killed me. I was finally discharged on Monday 3rd October and sent home with insulin to manage myself.

Although getting diabetes obviously isn’t the best thing to happen to someone, I just feel incredibly lucky to be alive right now. The probability of me making it into A&E that evening was so low- I could have come back later, gone home by myself on the train, gone straight back to Derby, missed the flight back, gone into a coma alone in Greece etc. I am so incredibly fortunate that things turned out the way they did.

I feel a surge of inspiration and urgency to get on with my life and everything I want to do. Not many people can say that they’ve come as close as I came to losing everything. I think having this kind of experience has changed my mindset because you realise how short life can be and how you should really make the most of the time you get here.

By all probability, I shouldn’t be here right now. But I am, and I’m using what happened to me as fuel to become better. There’s still so much more I want to do and that I have to contribute to this world.

From now on, I will take every great opportunity I can, work as hard as possible on growing myself as a person and start contributing to wider society.

To be completely honest, I feel like I’ve been given a second chance at life. This time, I won’t go with any regrets.

H