When others know best

My best friend Lauren and I have known one another now for 18 years. We met at the age of just 11 at school and of course, knew all there was to know about life. Like, what Leonardo DiCaprio's hobbies were and that school was really just about learning how to copy home-work and still make it look like your own.

Almost two decades later on and things have changed. A lot.

For starters, Leonardo DiCaprio never came knocking and judging by his preferences, I'm not sure it would have worked out.....And school was, in fact, for learning how to copy home-work and make it look like your own.

Nowadays we have both grown up, settled down and even got ourselves 'real' jobs.

Amazingly despite hating school and having a diabetic as a friend, Lauren decided not only to branch into the world of teaching, but also to specialise in the care of diabetic children, meaning she is one of the few golden people without diabetes who 'gets it'. I'm lucky in that I have always been blessed with people who sympathised and gave a damn. But in many ways Lauren has the knowledge you could expect only the parent or partner of a diabetic child to have.

Where we once had all the time in the world, finding time to just 'hang-out' these days is a very rare occasion, but this weekend Lauren and I stole a few hours to celebrate, albeit belatedly, her birthday. So we packed a picnic and headed for the hills - literally.

Halfway through our delightful afternoon, my 'spidey-senses' kicked in and I could feel a hypo brewing. I had already eaten and knew that the high fat contents had slowed down the high-sugar treats (oh come on, it was a birthday!) from entering my system. But I was still panicking. The hardest time to be calm, is during a hypo.

Worrying that I had eaten all the food we had and had only just run out of lucozade, I started to freak out, just a little. We were, after all, at the top of the hill with only one roll and half a glass of wine left.

But Lauren, with all her training on diabetes calmly said, "Give it 15 minutes honey,” and carried on telling me a story.

Of course despite nodding and saying 'yeah of course you're totally right', in my head it went more like this:

"ohmygodwehavetogofindsomesugarnowIamgoingtodie!"

Begrudgingly, knowing that she was probably right but so worried I could only half concentrate on what was being said, I held on.

Low and behold after 15 minutes of worrying I had jumped from 3.2 (and very ‘wobbly’) to 5.4 and finally able to concentrate again.

It’s funny how sometimes other people really do know better than you.

For a stubborn old bag like me, that’s a toughie to accept