A few months ago, I was happily getting on with life as a 25-year-old visual artist recovering from a broken foot, with no more than a passing interest in Steve Redgrave. My defining features, I would have told you then, were a propensity to drift into my own painted world, an unrivalled collection of small clutch bags, a great passion for cheap confectionery and the somewhat irritating habit of never putting on weight. If I had added that I was running to the loo all the time, drinking gallons of water and losing my eyesight alarmingly, you might have been more insightful than me and known what was coming next.
I hadn't read a decent book for weeks, and was just about surviving on a literary diet of large-print web-based articles about Darius from Popstars. I convinced myself this was due to being tired and culturally overloaded, but even after a good night's sleep I couldn't force my eyes to focus on a printed page. Then, having harassed my partner to put the light out early and stop taunting me with his hefty hardback crammed full of little French words, I would proceed to wake him several times a night as I made the long journey downstairs to pee. We went to the cinema. I went 13 times during Thirteen Days.
Our lives being as busy as they are, neither of us stopped to think that any of this would merit a trip to the doctor. Instead, I booked an appointment with the optician and delved into my own personal clinical trial of over-the-counter cystitis remedies. (The results: one of them tastes slightly less like a mixture of Angel Delight and weedkiller than the others.)
Lethargic, and having yet another ugly day, I went out with my sister for one of our food-and-therapy sessions. My ability to drink six soft drinks in under an hour undoubtedly impressed her, but it was with concern, rather than uncontrollable envy, that she asked me if I had any intention of going to the doctor.
"It's just that I think you may have all the symptoms of diabetes," she said softly. She's an actress, so I took her medical advice with a pinch of salt.
But the following day I did drive to the doctor, gorging myself on a king-sized packet of Chocolate Buttons, and dodging the oncoming traffic with all the deftness of the partially sighted. My usually smiling GP seemed to turn slightly serious at the description of my symptoms and asked whether I would be able to give him a urine sample. This was no trouble at all as I was peeing almost continually anyway. Once he had tested it and it had turned the strip a subtle shade of lime, a nurse was summoned to prick my finger and smear a drop of blood on to another test strip. I had too much glucose in my blood. I had diabetes.
"Will my life expectancy be shorter? Will I go blind? Can I have kids? Will I still be able to eat jam? Why, why, why?" I asked a thousand questions and my GP didn't appear to be able to offer me many positive answers. He told me, bluntly - and wrongly, I later discovered - that my life expectancy would be shorter. On the upside, he said, the smile returning to his face, I need not worry as Steve Redgrave is a diabetic. I'd only been diagnosed for half a minute, and already I was being put under pressure to be an Olympic rowing champion.
From that moment, everything went into overdrive. Within an hour I was sitting between my ashen-faced parents - I was temporarily forbidden to drive - and in front of a specialist at the hospital. I was shocked, thirsty, tired - but this man had seen it all before. Reassuring without being patronising, informative without lecturing, he managed only six or seven mentions of Steve Redgrave.
So Steve and I have diabetes, but we apparently are not "diabetic", because this defines the person, not the disease. This is the kind of political correctness I understand. The sentiment still grates, however, in its basic assumption that we seek our identities from one adjective each and must therefore be careful how we select it. We have type one diabetes and are insulin-dependent, although - to match his physically demanding routine - Steve has seven shots a day compared to my two. (All information concerning Mr Redgrave is provided courtesy of my GP, diabetes specialist, diabetes nurse, dietician, friends and relatives on a round-the-clock basis.) We eat a low-sugar diet and snack throughout the day on fruit and starchy foods to avoid our blood sugar levels dropping too low. Alongside our professional and personal activities, each day is spent in the conscious pursuit of blood glucose control. This is in place of the natural regulation we would otherwise achieve from a functioning, insulin-producing pancreas.
The day after my diagnosis I was fully kitted out with a blood glucose monitoring device, insulin, needles and an injecting Fun Pen (the name of which I would soon have cause to dispute). I learnt to inject myself in my upper thighs and bottom, and to prick my finger, dropping the blood on to a test strip inserted in a small meter.
All this equipment is a far cry from the nightmarish syringes and long needles I remember from observing a primary-school classmate with diabetes circa 1982. None the less, I have moved my collection of clutch bags to the bookshelf. My handbag is now the size of a small principality.
I spent the first day hating my body, before crying myself into oblivion over the fact that I was now more likely to make an inside page of the diabetic magazine Balance (next to a recipe for prawn crackers) than the front cover of Time Out. I went to the local newsagent and saw that the collection box I'd been dropping all my coppers into for weeks was actually for Diabetes UK: I had unwittingly been giving myself financial assistance.
For someone without the built-in routine of an office day, the injection regime has not been easy. I had to buy a watch and am slowly learning to trust that confusion, dizziness and a change in my speech rhythms indicate that I need to eat. I have keeled over a few times but, as I become more self-aware, these "hypos" are rarer. Only one has happened in public so far, and I was comforted to note that the strangers around me were both kind and competent at dealing with the situation, although this only lessened the embarrassment, not the shock. I now wear a MedicAlert bracelet, which informs people that I have diabetes and gives them an emergency number to call.
I am now so dependent on modern medicine that I will probably never live up a mountain in Tibet, keeping goats and surviving on wild grasses. I have learnt that, in order to avoid any small risk of complications, my partner and I will probably need to adjust our predictions for the coming years and have a family earlier than expected, and that this family will not necessarily include another person with diabetes. Friends and families have taken time out from researching sugar-free cakes to tell me how healthy I look, and it's dawning on me that I have never been the subject of this particular compliment before. I have started going swimming regularly; this has enabled me to reduce my insulin dosage, because exercise usually lowers blood glucose levels.
As for Olympic rowing, the initial pressure to buy oars has worn off, but I am glad diabetes has an appropriate role model in Steve Redgrave - particularly one who gives it so much positive press attention. Slobodan Milosevic would be the alternative diabetic figurehead, and I'd always choose rowing over genocide.
• For further information on diabetes, call Diabetes UK on 020-7323 1531 or visit www.diabetes.org.uk
