I think in Marie’s case it was too little too late

But that night, as she reached for a square of chocolate, something went terribly wrong. She collapsed and never regained consciousness.

This is how Nikki Boyd pictures her daughter’s last minutes in her mind’s eye.

She has played and replayed each second, tormenting herself with the minutiae of every imagined detail – Marie struggling out of bed, the fall – searching for answers. But she will never know with certainty how those fleeting minutes unfolded or why diabetes claimed her daughter’s life.

“We just didn’t understand,” says Nikki, from Walcot, her voice trailing off.

“We still don’t. I had been with her that afternoon. It was her daughter Grace’s second birthday and we had a bit of play-date. Then she was just gone.”

Nikki had watched powerless for years as her daughter battled to come to terms with diabetes.

But her death felt all the more unbearable as, by the time the 36-year-old succumbed to suspected complications from Type 1 diabetes, she had successfully turned her life around, determined to face the condition head on to be a fit mother to her two young children.

“She was fine for a number of years and we had put everything out of our minds,” sighs Nikki, an occupational health technician at Honda.

“I think in Marie’s case it was too little too late. It’s not until she had a family that she looked after herself the way she should have been doing and that was too late.”

Marie was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 17.

Initially in utter denial of her condition, she carried on as normal, gambling with her health, drinking with her friends, failing to monitor her blood sugar levels or adapt her diet to ward off diabetes’ debilitating highs and harmful lows.

Soon she developed retinopathy, a complication of diabetes, caused by high blood sugar levels damaging retina.

“I encouraged her to treat herself but she was a teenager,” she explains.

“I actually practised injecting on myself – with nothing of course – just so I would know what it feels like for her to inject insulin. I wanted to know as much as possible so I could help her, know what she was feeling. But I never realised how bad it could get for her.”

Type 1 diabetes develops when the body becomes unable to produce insulin. No-one can do anything to prevent developing the condition.

Nikki watched helpless as her daughter toyed recklessly with her health, but was never fully aware of the toll Marie’s carelessness was truly taking on her wellbeing.

Things came to a head when Marie became 22. A common cold escalated into a severe chest infection and she was taken to hospital. Within minutes she was rushed to intensive care and placed on a ventilator.

When doctors warned Nikki to prepare for the worst, the gravity of her daughter’s illness truly hit home.

“It was a shock to discover she was so seriously ill; I had no idea it had got to that point,” recalls the 56-year-old.

“She wasn’t following her treatment. If she had been doing what she should have, it never would have got to the level it did.

“Doctors tried to prepare us. But I thought she was tougher than that. I thought, ‘No, not Marie’. I just willed her to get better.”

The incident should have been a wake-up call for Marie and yet, overwhelmed by the strenuous regime of carb counting and insulin injections, she never fully got her condition under control until she became pregnant with her son.

For the first time, she kept her sugar levels in check, resolved to avoid another near-miss. Joshua’s birth, and her daughter Grace’s arrival three years later finally gave her a sense of purpose and responsibility – to herself – she had never felt before.

“Her family was her life – she did everything for them,” Nikki smiles weakly.

A devoted mother, she gave up work as a nursery nurse to look after Joshua, now six, and Grace, three.

Just days before her death at her Park South home, she had been toiling away in the kitchen designing a towering fairy castle out of pink icing for Grace’s second birthday.

She collapsed on May 30, 2014. By the time her husband found her lying on their bedroom floor she was beyond saving.

“The phone rang – it was my son-in-law,” she pauses, her voice choked up with emotion.

“He said Marie had collapsed and paramedics had tried to revive her.

“She had sweets in her mouth so maybe she had a hypo, which maybe was not going away like it usually would have done. Whether she got out of bed to raise the alarm, I don’t know. She had been texting friends not long before.”

Overcome with grief, for a long time Nikki struggled with feelings of frustration and an unspeakable sense of loss and injustice.

“The inquest was inconclusive but diabetes was most likely a cause if not the main cause. There’s always that, ‘Was it? Wasn’t it?’. You just don’t know. You will never know. That’s the hardest part about it,” she said.

Spurred on by her grandchildren, she learned to go through the motions each day for their sake.

Last year, determined to spare other families the same heartbreak, she organised a race night and raised £2,000 for Diabetes UK, towards vital research.

Keen to shed light on the devastating effects of the condition and its different strands, she reached out to the charity to hold awareness days at Honda and encourage her co-workers to make healthy changes.

Her tireless campaign to bring diabetes to the fore and prevent unnecessary deaths or health complications caused quite a stir in the diabetes community and last March she was awarded Diabetes UK’s Fundraising Inspire Award for her efforts.

“I can’t change what happened,” she adds.

“Every minute of every day I think of her. There are always anniversaries and birthdays, it’s not easy. There’s a big part of my life missing but if I can do something to stop other people going through this then I will.

"I’m still grieving but I’m hoping that, as time goes on, it will get easier. I really hope so.”

Nikki and her husband Chris will take part in the Diabetes UK London Bridges Challenge in October in memory of Marie. To sponsor them go to www.justgiving.com/Nikki-Boyd2.

Factfile

• About 11,700 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 or little insulin is produced, glucose levels increase, which can seriously damage the body’s organs. People with Type 1 diabetes need insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Type 1 cannot be prevented.
•  Type 2 diabetes happens when the body doesn’t produce enough insulin, or the body’s cells don’t react to insulin. This is known as insulin resistance. Family history, age and ethnic background can affect a person’s risk of developing Type 2. It is often associated with obesity. 
•  People with diabetes are at greater risk of developing eyesight and heart problems, as well as issues with their feet due to the damage to nerves and circulation.
•  Diabetes UK has put together a list of 15 essential checks. To find out more go to www.diabetes.org.uk