Diabetes sufferer Nate Barnes tells MARION SAUVEBOIS how he managed to break a vicious downward spiral of depression and neglect to finally come to terms with his condition and manage it to lead a healthier life

“YOU can tell someone until you’re blue in the face to look after themselves but if they don’t want to they won’t,” sighs Nate Barnes. “It has to come from you. You’re only hurting yourself.”

Hell-bent on leading a “normal life”, he had spent nearly four decades gambling with his life, subjecting his body to the most harmful highs and lows of diabetes when, four years ago, it came close to giving up on him.

At a crossroads, at the age of 36, he finally accepted to face the condition he had tacitly allowed to gnaw away at his mind, health and self-esteem. “I’m quite lucky I’m still here with what I did,” he admits with a pained smile.

“I know people who have passed on from diabetic complications or who have had lots of problems.”

At the age of three, Nate became a difficult child, or so his mother believed. He grew moody and extremely demanding, constantly asking for a glass of water. She had just given birth to a baby girl and assumed he was simply jealous and seeking attention.

But his bad-temper and grumbling for a drink were in fact the early signs of Type 1 diabetes. Suspecting there may be more to it than plain sibling rivalry, his uncle, who had recently been diagnosed with the condition, took him aside and performed a quick urine test. It immediately flagged up unusually high blood sugar levels and Nate was rushed to hospital, where he was diagnosed with diabetes. He remained on the ward for two weeks as doctors tried to stabilise his sugar levels.

“This was the start of the nightmare,” says Nate, originally from Highworth. “I had insulin injections from that day forward.”

Type 1 diabetes develops when the body becomes unable to produce insulin.

No one can do anything to prevent developing Type 1.

As a child the condition seemed rather abstract, was something his mother carefully managed for him. She counted the carbohydrates in his meals, made sure he received his insulin injections and ate at regular intervals to regulate his blood glucose levels.

But at the age of 11, things took a turn for the worse. He suddenly had to learn to be responsible for treatment and the burden of never-ending carbohydrate counts and insulin shots proved overwhelming.

“I didn’t really grasp what I had to do. It was all guess work,” explains the 40-year-old assistant pub manager from Redhouse.

“Through my teenage years I was quite up and down. I had whole episodes when I had to go hospital because of hypos – low blood glucose levels. I didn’t use the right amount of insulin. You just want to be like your mates so if you forget your kit and you have to eat, you don’t want to go home and get it. You just want to be a normal child.”

Burying his head in the sand, by the time he was 15 he had grown reckless, dangerously toying with his health. He started to smoke. By 18, he was drinking, oblivious to the increased risk to diabetics. While alcohol is not forbidden as such, it makes hypoglycaemia more likely to occur. Sufferers are also at greater risk of serious eye problems, stroke and heart disease.

Eventually his careless attitude took an irreversible toll on his eyesight. At 21, he was diagnosed with retinopathy, a complication of diabetes caused by high blood sugar levels which damages the retina. He received extensive laser treatment for a year. But the peripheral vision in his right eye was irreparably damaged.

Far from relieved at this lucky escape – he may have gone blind had the retinopathy not been picked up in time – he fell into a downward spiral of depression and self-neglect, jeopardising his health further.

“When I felt happy I would control my diabetes, when I didn’t I let it go. Diabetes affects not just your health, it affects your state of mind. It’s a vicious circle.”

The emotional and physical ebb and flow continued until finally in 2012, Nate lost his grip entirely and had a nervous breakdown. While this could have spelt out the start of an even darker period of self-neglect, it was the wake-up call he so desperately needed to face reality and tackle the condition head on.

“You have to hit rock bottom,” he says. “I remember once telling a nurse, ‘I’m a bad diabetic’ and she said, ‘There’s no such thing’. From that moment on, I started looking at it properly. Before all I did was push it out of my mind instead of deal with it. I got in touch with the diabetic nurse at GWH, I started working out my carbohydrate count. Although it was still guess work with how much insulin I needed.”

Determined to improve his health yet often frustrated by the strenuous regime of carb counting and injections he plodded along until, in 2014, he started using a blood test metre. The machine, which monitors blood sugar levels and works out how many units of insulin a patient needs, “changed everything”, he explains.

The following year he was fitted with an insulin pump connected to the meter via bluetooth. Suddenly, thanks to new advanced technology, a load was lifted and diabetes stopped being the insurmountable hurdle it once seemed. He started to run for the first time in his life and really look after himself.

Much happier in his own skin, Nate who has been managing his brother’s band Go Moriarty for 14 years, convinced the group to donate the proceeds of their album, Welcome to the Real World, on iTunes, to Diabetes UK and support sufferers struggling to come to terms with the incurable condition like he did.

“Even when you try really hard it can still go up and down,” he concedes. “It can make you feel down but you can’t let it. After 37 years you have to come to terms with it. I wouldn’t change it for the world now. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. I just want to help people understand. You want to live a normal life and ignore it but in effect it puts you at risk and you’re not living a normal life. It’s part of who you are. It’s part of me now.”

Factfile

  • An estimated 11,665 people in Swindon have diabetes. This means that approximately 6.5% of the local adult population has diabetes, compared to 6.2% in England. 
  •  634 people are believed to have undiagnosed diabetes in Swindon.
  •  In Type 1 diabetes, the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the cells that produce insulin. As no insulin is produced, the glucose levels increase, which can seriously damage the body’s organs. People diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes need insulin injections for the rest of their lives.
    No one can do anything to prevent developing Type 1.
  •  Type 2 diabetes is where the body doesn’t produce enough insulin, or the body’s cells don’t react to insulin. This is known as insulin resistance.It is often associated with obesity. Family history, age and ethnic background can also affect a person’s risk of developing Type 2
  •  People with diabetes are at much greater risk of developing eyesight and heart problems, as well as issues with their feet due to the damage raised blood sugars can cause to sensation and circulation.
  •  Go to www.diabetes.org.uk for information on the condition.