It’s been a year since my mature onset diabetes diagnosis, following on from my lower right limb amputation. I visited the diabetes specialist last week, and he told me he is happy with my progress, especially considering my blood sugar levels are now mostly fairly stable, ranging between 5-8 mmol/L, after reaching in the 70 range when I was admitted to hospital.
This past year has been a learning experience. While many friends and family understood the amputation, the diabetes diagnosis often went unnoticed. This led to well-meaning gifts like sweets during my hospital stay, which weren’t ideal, but still very much appreciated. There was one massive block of chocolate I gave away to a friend.
Sweidsh buns. Yum!!
Looking back, there were signs I missed in my diabetes diagnosis. The frothiness in my urine for example, a symptom of mature onset diabetes.
Upon admission to hospital, my dangerously high blood sugar (in the 70s mmol/L) could have been life-threatening.
Initially, hospital staff monitored my blood sugar and administered insulin several times a day. Over time, I learned self-testing and have transitioned to managing my diabetes with tablets. At first, I never thought I could inject myself, but it turned out to be easier than I anticipated, using a “pen”.
Now, I test my blood glucose twice daily. A finger prick, a test strip, and a quick scan with my phone app logs my levels. This daily data allows me to adjust my diet and track my progress with weekly reports. Thankfully, some of the costs involved are covered through the National Diabetes Scheme.
My average weekly score is now a reasonably healthy 6.8-7.0 mmol/L, although occasionally it dips below 5 mmol/L occur. Spikes above 7 mmol/L are more frequent, sometimes reaching 12-13 mmol/L. These spikes often coincide with feeling unwell or indulging in treats I shouldn’t, like bakery items. Stress can also affect my blood sugar levels, as I’ve written about previously. https://thelimbshift.com/2024/01/it-makes-my-blood-spike/
Interestingly, sashimi and red wine seem to help lower my levels. Can’t argue with that. Beyond testing, I’ve also learned to recognize my body’s cues for high or low sugar, including light-headedness.
Early on, I anxiously carried testing kits and insulin everywhere with me. Thankfully, things have become more manageable. I understand which foods work for me and have adopted a more balanced diet than I had previously.
While I miss some things like white bread, rice, and pizza, I’ve discovered new favorites like my berry and yogurt breakfast. For lunch I’ll usually have some kind of salad or vegetable meal, with protein for dinner. Throughout the day I’ll have tea or coffee, and will usually accompany it with a biscuit. I’ve become quite the one for taking my own suitable biscuits to nearby coffee shops, resisting the temptations they have. I also miss going out and getting drunk with friends, having to watch my alcohol consumption. But in the grand scheme of things, having to make that change may not be so bad.
Coffee with a sugar free, gluten free, chocolate free biscuit. It’s not as bad as it sounds!!
Recently, my optometrist detected slight retinal swelling (edema) during my eye exam, but no glaucoma. A new prescription might be all I need, but I need to be conscious possible blindness can sometimes be an issue for diabetes.
On a personal note, diabetes has impacted my “intimate life”. I share this openly because I think transparency is important. There’s improvement, but age might also be a factor.
At first I thought diabetes was going to worse than the amputation. But in the end, it’s not so bad afterall.
As far as my workplace is concerned, summer is coming to an end. A bunch of people arrive back on Monday. And so things will ease off a little bit for me, as I can almost go back to doing only my job and not keeping an eye on some other areas too. Yay. So I went out for lunch to celebrate. Well, not really. It was just a lovely day.
And so when I asked a couple of colleagues if they’d made plans for lunch, and they hadn’t, the solution became obvious: Din Tai Fung. They have the yummiest food which is made freshly before your eyes (windows into the kitchen), and with good, speedy service. And while best known for their dumplings, I enjoyed a really terrific tofu dish today. In fact, of all the meals we ate, it was my favourite.
Tofu at Din Tai Fung
So yeah, work was reasonably straight-forward today. I got a lot achieved and I got to go out for lunch. On the way home I noticed how good the air felt. After cloudy days, after humidity, after extreme temperatures, today was just about the perfect Sydney summer day.
So how did I spend the night? Watching television, of course, though nothing memorable.
I received a “Year in Review” post today from YouTube Music, and thought it would be fun to share my top 5 most played songs of the year.
All of these songs have been great company throughout the year, and they’ve often resulted in me dancing around the lounge room. They’ve been great for stress relief and relaxation. I might be fast approaching 60, but I still love a good pop song.
Real Power by Gossip : I LOVE this fierce track which challenges societal norms on many levels and celebrates female empowerment, both lyrically and in the film clip’s imagery.
Flowers by Miley Cyrus : This is such a great sing-along song. “Flowers” is a breakup anthem that celebrates self-love and independence. Apparently, the lyrics are based on her own experience of a breakup. She was married to an Australian actor, I think, though I don’t care enough to look it up. I think my favourite bit of trivia about Miley Cyrus is that her god mother is Dolly Parton.
Dance Your Pain Away by Agnetha Faltskog : This upbeat disco track encourages you to let go of your worries and dance your pain away. This is a remix of a song released about a decade ago, hence no actual video clip. She’s doing okay for 74 years old!
No More Drama by Mary J. Blige : This has been a long-term favourite, in part because the track samples “Nadia’s Theme”, also the theme music to “The Young & The Restless”. In fact, she refers to herself as being “young and restless”. The theme of the song is about self-respect and overcoming toxic relationships. The video is compelling. Passionate!
Violent Thing by Benjamin Dolic : This was Germany’s entry to Eurvosion a couple of years ago, and despite the kind of haunting lyrics about love, violence, and addiction, it’s also a great song to dance along to. Ben also has fantastic eyelashes!!
BONUS TRACK : This was my number six song of the year. The incredibly catchy “Rush” by Troye Sivan. I’m only sharing it because it has a very suggestive (explicit??) video clip.
Today’s list also gave me a list of my favourite / most listened to podcasts of the year, but I won’t bore you with it, as it was all about politics.
It’s about one o’clock in the morning and it’s light outside. Although I know the sun is out there somewhere, I can’t actually see it, due to the fog which has enveloped Narvik.
I’m staying in the top floor room of a guest house. “You’re in the old maid’s room”, the bloke who owns the house told me when I arrived. And as I look out of my window, I can see a couple of houses (one of them has a light on out the front) against a grey sky background.
I haven’t seen too much of Narvik yet, retiring to bed soon after I arrived at seven o’clock tonight. After the activities of the last few days, and today’s intense day of travelling I was exhausted. And, in stark contrast to the communal living of the youth hostel, I’ve found myself in a single room with an extremely comfortable bed which proved far too enticing.
As I walked around Stockholm last night it was just beautiful. Even at about 10 o’clock, the sun was shining, adding a wonderful gentle yellow glow to the city’s buildings. And when I left Stockholm early this morning, it was definitely “shorts weather”. Actually, it was even a little bit hot. “So this is the famous Swedish summer I’ve heard about”, I thought to myself as I caught the suburban trains to Arlanda Airport.
“Personally I’d take the Arlanda Express”, the young bloke at the counter told me at Stockholm Central when I asked him about catching the suburban trains this morning. “Does it take too long and is it too hideous for words?”, I asked him in return, to which he replied in the negative. He smiled in a friendly way when I told him I came in via the express and was just looking for another, a different adventure.
Although I’d read previously the Swedes can be a little stand-offish, I haven’t found this to be the case so far. In fact, I’ve found them to be incredibly welcoming and helpful most of the time. Thus, when I asked (in Swedish) a nearby woman on Platform 16 to confirm that I was on the right platform for Upplands Visby (the connecting route for Arlanda Airport) she replied with a smile and some helpful information.
Taken from the train between Kiruna and Narvik in Norway.
I suspect I was a bit of an oddity on the train also, as most non-Swedes would probably catch the express. Subsequently, I found people quite warm and helpful, giving me instructions along the way.
There was a woman of about 60 opposite me who looked at me, though, in an odd kind of way. Not negative, just confused about why a non-Swedish tourist who wasn’t an eighteen-year-old backpacker would be catching the suburban route. After a moment or so of looking me up and down you could see she has convinced herself I wasn’t a serial killer and gave me a smile.
At about this time, a middle-aged man with a Middle Eastern complexion (maybe Turkish) came walking through the cabin and dropped a brochure on neighbouring seats. The flyer explained that he had two children who both had leukemia and that he was in need of financial assistance. It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen people begging, and I’ve wondered how these people have slipped through the Swedish welfare net. I’ve seen no obvious evidence, so far, of on the street homelessness related to either mental illness or drug addiction, as we have in Sydney.
The Swedish woman looked at the brochure with a sneer and further caught my eye with a smile when the bloke said something to me (which I couldn’t understand), and I replied with an “I don’t speak English very well” response.
As you go further and further out of central Stockholm, it gets more and more like Sydney’s Western Suburbs. More like any outer suburban area really, as you see more and more working class and non-caucasian faces getting on and off the train. You also hit the factory belt and the countryside pretty quickly.
And it was also then that I really started to feel the warmth of the Swedish sunlight coming through the windows of the train. I could also feel it through the window on the aircraft on the flight from Stockholm to Kiruna.
Aside from spilling some milk on the young woman sitting next to me (“Inte problema”, she said to me when I apologised), the plane trip was without incident.
I noticed, however, that I was welcomed onto the plane with “wilkommen”. It’s not the first time I’ve been assumed to be German and I guess it won’t be the last. Clearly, I don’t look Swedish in the typical kind of way, and clearly, I look like a bit of a tourist, but I never assumed I looked German.
As we made our way towards Kiruna, it occurred to me that, in an Australian context, I was flying to “Western Australia” and that Kiruna was probably Sweden’s answer to “Karratha”. As you fly from Stockholm you see the landscape change dramatically, and as you fly into Kiruna you see what is essentially a mining town in the middle of an extremely attractive landscape.
The contrast between Kiruna – organised, industrial – and the nearby landscape is dramatic. With the melting of the snow, the landscape was lush and green. But even now in the middle of summer, you still see mountain tops covered in snow. Even the Swedes on the plane, who must have seen it a thousand times, were in awe at some of the sights.
That, however, was not the case for two nearby women as we travelled by train from Kiruna to Narvik. While I was “oohing” and “ahhing” at every minor change in the landscape, they were looking at trash magazines and were reading out every bit of minor trivia contained therein. Not being able to understand everything they said though, I listened more for tone and intonation. In Australia, they would have been Cheryl and Sharon, here they seemed a little more exotic. :)
I personally found the train journey quite remarkable. You start off with a fairly flat green landscape, progress into a spectacular lakes district, and climb the mountains to true alpine country, before finding yourself on the Norwegian coastline. I spent most of the trip with my head stuck out the window taking as many photographs as I possibly could.
It was really great to watch the vegetation change also. At the beginning, it’s all flat and Savannah like, where the trees are all about the same height. Then, in the lakes district, you start to see some of the typical alpine vegetation of conifers. And by the time you’ve reached the top of the mountain, the vegetation has largely disappeared and it’s mostly just rock. You see the occasional white flower, though, in the midst of it all. “Is that eidelweiss?, I thought to myself at one point.
Oh, and I loved how they did the border change. As you cross from Sweden to Norway you go into a tunnell, and, quite simply you see two flags next to each other. Voila! You’re in another country. Bloody EU – where’s my passport stamp?
In contrast to everyone else on the train, I was still wearing shorts when we arrived in Narvik. They were all rugged up for the winter and maybe some skiing, while I was here on a summer holiday. Peer pressure got to me, though, and I put a jumper on just minutes before arriving at the station.
I had a great feeling of elation in arriving in Narvik. “Wow”, I’m here”, I thought to myself, on the top of the world, on the opposite side of the world. The train station is fairly simple, almost run down, and the first pay phone I found didn’t work. But, like all train stations and airports, there was a real sense of joy in the air, as people met their friends and relatives.
“Are you from Narvik?”, I asked the bloke who owns the guest house. “No, but I’ve been here 50 years”, he told me, adding that his wife was from Narvik. On the way to the guest house, he pointed out the shops where I could buy food. And when I asked him if there was a simple, polite local greeting I could use in shops, he told me I should just speak English. “All Norwegians speak English. It’s just the English, the Americans and the Australians who speak only one language”, he smilingly said.
Anyway, it’s now 1.40 am, and the fog has lifted. I think it’s time to go back to sleep for a while.
Heading down to grab a coffee at work today, a man stepped into the lift behind me and immediately asked, “What happened to your leg?” I could see genuine concern in his eyes—it wasn’t idle curiosity.
I explained that I’d developed sepsis from a cut on my foot while on holiday. He shared, with visible heartache, that his brother was facing the exact same ordeal: a cut foot, sepsis, and sadly, gangrene, with a double lower-leg amputation scheduled for tomorrow.
The poor man was completely overwhelmed. We stood there for half an hour, and I did my best to offer comfort and practical advice. I suggested he look into the Limbs 4 Life Facebook peer support group and shared small, humanising tips that helped me, like the importance of getting out of the hospital for a trip to the beach or the shops. I also mentioned practical aids, such as a plastic shower chair and a bed bottle, which can make such a difference in those early days.
Hospital stays can feel incredibly isolating, which is why I’m so grateful for friends like Andrea and Ross. Taking me out for some fresh air at the beach gave me such a necessary boost and helped me feel human again. It really is the little things that matter most.
Since his brother is 68, he doesn’t qualify for the NDIS, and he told me they felt lost navigating the system. I encouraged him to ask the hospital for a social worker to assist with prosthetic referrals. We also talked about the weight of it all; I shared that while formal hospital psychiatry wasn’t the right fit for me, the peer support I received through a call from Limbs 4 Life was life-changing.
Before I finally headed off for my coffee, we exchanged numbers. I made sure to clarify that while I’m not a counsellor, I am always here to listen and share what I’ve learned.
It reminded me of a recent request from a friend in the US asking if I’d be open to another amputee reaching out. My answer was the same: I’m always happy to share my story if it helps someone else feel a little less alone.
I’ve been wanting to complete the official Limbs 4 Life peer support training, but life has been busy—and occasionally challenging, between a trip to Lismore and a hospital stay for a broken hip. I still hope to do the training eventually, though I sometimes wonder if I’d be any good at it. In the meantime, I feel like the best way I can give back is through my podcast, where I can continue recording and sharing stories with our beautiful limb difference community. And by answering questions from random people who ask you with the best of intentions.
For the last couple of years, you may recall my involvement in a local story-telling project called “Surry Hills and Valleys“.
There’s four of us involved. The main drivers are Tim (with his photographs) and Karina (reaching out to people for their stories). Astra and I contribute with text, ideas, and the website.
It’s a good program. The four of us think it’s really captured the essence of what the story was all about. Congratulations to all those involved in making it happen.
We travelled by train, bus, car and ferry, and it took a while, but we got there. and we made it home. Our destination was the Armory Gallery at Newington, near Sydney Olympic Park. We caught the train to Strathfield and the bus to Silverwater Gaol. And from there it was just a 10-minute walk along the road. We both thought, at one point, it was like being in a country town, as there was almost no development, and the road was a little patchy.
While they were preparing for tonight’s rugby union match between Australia and France at nearby ANZ Stadium, Damo and I were instead headed to the opening of From Mao To Now, an exhibition curated by my friend Kate. It’s the largest group exhibition ever held in Australia of China-related works, apparently, and the Arts and Olympic Park Minister, Frank Sartor was there for the opening.
From Mao to Now at Sydney Olympic Park
The exhibition begins with a series of forty or fifty “propaganda posters” from a “propaganda museum” in Shanghai. With their bright colours and imagery that includes everything from ordinary workers to a “timeline” that includes Marx, Lenin and Stalin, they’re visually quite stunning to behold. And then when you look more closely at the posters and examine the many common themes – extolling the importance of “physical strength”, “hard work” and “nation-building” – you begin to understand how important they must have been in the modernisation process. One, in particular, caught my eye: a poster of an athlete, with the flags of a number of countries including the UK, the US, and France in the background, and underneath the phrase “you need to be internationally competitive”
From Mao to Now at Sydney Olympic Park
And from there, the exhibition merges fairly seamlessly into works by Australian artists with an interest in China, and Australian-Chinese artists reflecting on modern China. As you might imagine, some of the works are highly political, such as the portrait of a dancer with his feet facing an image of Mao (culturally it’s highly offensive), along with images of tanks. Another favourite piece was a series of emails by an artist who bought tickets in the name “Dali Lama” at the Beijing Olympics.
From Mao to Now at Sydney Olympic Park
But it’s not all political. There are some wonderful porcelain pieces, a series of three works based around Chinese dragons which I loved, and there’s even a portrait of Cathy Freeman by an Australian-Chinese artist. Also memorable is a video work by an Australian Chinese artist who reflects on women and politics in Australia, with particular reference to Pauline Hanson. There are lots of memorable works in the exhibition, and you really need to set aside an hour or two to absorb everything that’s contained in it.
