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My biggest accomplishment

I had to think hard about this one. I'm in a place right now where I don't really feel like I've got a handle on anything, so apart from the fact that I'm still here, alive and kicking - which I suppose is something of an accomplishment in and of itself - there isn't much, diabetes wise that in feeling like I can hang my hat on. So I had to have a good long think about what I wanted to write about. And then it came to me.

I don't know if you've ever stood barefoot in snow. I'd you haven't, I can't say that I recommend it. I know that this is staying the obvious, but it is really really cold. All the same, that's the position that I found myself in at a disturbingly early hour one Saturday morning in January this year. This was because I was all smartly decked out for graduation day. So ok, I wasn't technically barefoot, but due to a badly considered stocking and suspender belt fiasco I was bare legged, which is as close as dammit. This wasn't my first graduation, as this was a postgraduate affair.

I had taken two years to complete my MA. It has a ridiculously long title, of Master of Arts in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance, and the fact I had been completing it part time had nothing to do with the length of the name, but to do with the fact I couldn't afford to stop working full time. So I had a part time degree, a full time job, and diabetes which didn't seem to want to cut me any sort of slack.

In the middle of my first set off assignments, I had numbers that wouldn't come down for love nor money, and felt sick as a dog, which is exactly what you want when you're trying to be intelligent and informed.

I started pumping during this time as well. I can't say that two hourly testing for two weeks straight helped my concentration during lectures.

If I'm honest, I hadn't really imagined that it was all going to impact on the whole degree process as, much as it did. With hindsight I should have anticipated it, but I didn't. On my graduation day I didn't really take stock of how much perseverance it had taken. But I'm thinking about it now.

It took me two years and, more energy, sticking power and sleepless nights than I anticipated, but I did it. And no-one can take that away from me. Mainly because that bad boy's on my CV, and you wouldn't know where I keep the certificate anyway.