Written on Feb 14, 2025. ![[diabetes_travelodge.jpg]] This is a poorly captured angle of a hotel room with a desk strewn with medicines. The orange pen you see if you squint your eyes enough is insulin. Clicked exactly 5 years ago, this is the first night of my discharge from the hospital after being admitted and the subsequent diagnosis that I had become a type 1 diabetic. It's been 5 years and the battle is on and so far, I am kicking ass. If you would like to read a bit about my experience with diabetes so far, please read ahead. This is not meant to be a "guide to cure your diabetes". Instead it reads like a speech I would be proud to give if I ever had an opportunity to do so. ### My story - Grappling with the diagnosis Where do I start? Probably I should start with the diagnosis. I had just been admitted into LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science. What a spectacular place to be in for a kid who's come from a college all the way back in India, Bangalore. Obviously not the IITs. I did not come from the IITs. I came from this college called Amrita School of Engineering, which is still pretty good, but it wasn't an IIT. And I got admitted into most universities I applied to here in the UK, including biggies in London like LSE and UCL. I did get rejected by both King's College London as well as Oxford, thus keeping me humble. When I had to get a routine tuberculosis test done for my travel, I was hit with a not-so-nice surprise. The doctors had discovered a hole in my heart. Apparently I had that hole in my heart since birth. It was a congenital disorder, but we've got no idea how my paediatrician missed it over the several years he kept his stethoscope glued to my chest during flu season. It somehow slipped right through the cracks. The doctors' analysis confirmed that it was a pretty big hole and their recommendation was to get that fixed before I left home and moved countries for higher education. I was about 21 at that time, so it did make sense to get that patched up so that it didn't affect me later. I always had issues as a kid. I always had issues running. I used to play football. I was the right back for the school team. I was pretty good, I would say. Not the best, there was a lot of great players around me, but that was OK. But I always had difficulty running. I almost always felt it was because I was being lazy - but probably it was the heart. That's why it started banging on a lot harder every time I did some quick runs. I had to go under the knife because they could not do a non-invasive process; the hole was too wide. Had a full open heart surgery. I don't know if any of you have seen that movie, **The Autopsy of Jane Doe**. I never saw me getting cut, I was under anesthesia, thankfully. But I like to joke that, "hey, I was opened up like a butterfly like the corpse in the movie". It was also the year of COVID, so there was a bit of social exclusion and everything before that. A bit of a stressful time, I would say. And I never really had a proper graduation from my B-Tech, so I could not meet all my friends then and blah, blah. This was also the time my MSc degree had started here in London and I attended my first class from my hospital bed. Since it was COVID, we did have some options to start online. That worked okay for me. And that's how I started my entire master's degree. I still remember that little blue robe, the hospital robe that you have, and I started that, started my class, and then I went under the knife the next day. And then during the recovery period, I was attending classes. I like to learn things, take notes, and when I look back to it, it's that guy that gives me this huge amount of passion to do things and lock in because that was just, that was just seriously mad. I could have always deferred the degree, but then I went through it and I have no idea. Would I, would I have the courage to do something like that now? I most definitely wouldn't. But hey, I recovered and joined the degree here in person in London. I was here in around December, lockdown, pretty strong, not a lot of things going on. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't full lockdown, but there were not a lot of people out there. I can't really recollect. Got into Lilian Knowles house, which is down near Liverpool Street, the LSE accommodation. And yeah, here, here's a guy who's never really lived alone. I had not even got to a hostel back in my undergrad. Now I've got to do everything, do things like laundry, cook and shop. And then the foreign currency difference. I'm not making any money. It's my parents' money and really don't want to spend it on things. But at the same time, I'm a guy who likes eating food from outside. The mental struggle was real! And then came this period of time where I woke up in the morning, but just could not lift my legs up. Legs were super heavy. I was always lethargic. I wake up, first thing I crave is a bunch of cornflakes and milk and I have that and chop in some mandarins inside. I don't know for what purpose. And I am watching this lovely show called The Ripper's Tale on Amazon Prime. It is a, it is a funny little show. It wasn't funny. It's a very grim show, but I found it to be a bit funny because it was all about Jack the Ripper and Jack the Ripper was a bit of my fascination. I remember one day I just woke up at like 5 a.m. Out there in the cold, just, just running — thinking that's gonna help me lock in and save my life, because I was feeling really shit. And I somehow ran and reached the square near Liverpool Street. I don't know what it's called anymore. But apparently that's the square where one of Jack the Ripper's victims were found. So hey, it was all a bit of fascination. And I think you can already understand I'm a bit of a grim guy with what I'm telling you here. But now coming back, these days, I started feeling really shit. And I had some flatmates and some of them were nice. I mean, I would say almost all of them were nice, but the first time I'm with different people. I obviously get butt hurt for every tiny thing. I remember there was one instance where we were all having a bit of a potluck or whatnot. And I did not cook anything because the others were cooking. And the idea was, I should wash the dishes. But no one told me that, so I just went to sleep. I get a message later from someone: hey, you should be doing this, you should pull your weight. And there was no disrespect. That's perfect, what she said. But I felt really bad, blah, blah, blah. I don't know why I felt bad, but maybe it was a bit of trauma because I was already sick and whatnot. Time passed, calling my parents. And one day I just break down and I start crying on call because I'm like, what is going on here? I don't know what's happening. My parents, well, they've always been kind, but at the same time, I'm sure they themselves were confused on what's really going on, why is he like this, what is he like doing drugs in a new country, what's up with him? All the usual ideas anybody can get when they don't know what's going on. I was still attending classes online. We did not have permission to go into uni yet, so still attending, struggling. I took an elective. The elective, I think, was qualitative text analysis. I really wanted to do it. And after about two sessions, I realised I just could not stick with it. And I had to cancel that class because it was optional anyways. Because I was struggling at the same time I had already become the co-head of the educational wing of the LSE Data Science Society. And that was pretty big - no one knew me, but there I was running a bit of a club. And then we had this big event. I was organizing things. Then there was this hackathon for which I got some of my classmates. It was a women in data science hackathon. And I got some of my really, really bright classmates to try and form a team and do something. Again, I could not pull my weight because I had no idea what was going on with me. Like it just couldn't. This was new to me. It was so fucking new. And finally, one day, one of my uncle's friends showed up with some food because he knew I was sick. Everyone knew I was sick. My parents were really, really worried. Like, it's quite disheartening how worried my parents were. And he came to see how he could help. This entire period was really stressful. My excretory system was not functioning well. My legs were killing me. I could not see things clearly. My eyes always felt so clouded. My judgment was clouded. I was irritable and I had no fucking clue what's going on. And when I felt really, really vulnerable, one of these flatmates showed up at my room with another flatmate. They knocked. I opened. She was like, "Hey, are you sick?". And I said, "I don't know. I feel sick". And she said, "you know, you should tell us, right? We need to know whether you're sick." I'm pretty sure she said that out of an area of concern, but... I felt really, really bad. We didn't have a fight, but I felt really bad. I was like, in my head, I was like, what the fuck? I don't even know what's going on with me. Why is everyone so rude to me? What is fucking happening? One day, uncle's friend came. Beautiful. He came in and I just told him, just take me to the hospital. I don't know what to do in this country, just take me. He called the number - I think it's 911 in the UK, I'm not sure - and there I was strapped to a bed, taken in an ambulance, and I was in the hospital. And it's funny - I already recall this scene from my open heart surgery only months ago. You're like on a bed, looking straight up, can't see anything. You move your head to the side and you can see people standing around you. All right, here I was in the hospital. There was a lovely Southeast Asian doctor looking up at me and he asked, "are you diabetic?". And I said, I don't know. I don't think so. And then he said, "no, but you are diabetic". And that is when it hit me. That was a diagnosis. I was hit with DKA, diabetic ketoacidosis, which is something that happens when the sugar levels in your body are incredibly high. And everything I was experiencing was just symptoms due to this particular problem. And me being me, I was not surprised in a bad way. I was just relieved. I just said, okay, okay, I get it. There was nothing else. You watch a movie, you think life is gonna be dramatic, right? You watch a movie, you see someone breaking apart or you see someone get tears or whatnot. I did not have any of that because maybe that's what reality is. Maybe every diabetic who's ever been diagnosed has the same reaction. And I obviously was a bit surprised when I thought about it later, like how am I diabetic, right? I'm not someone who had a very, very bad lifestyle before that compared to some of my classmates, for sure. My dad doesn't have it. Then how did I get this? It was probably because of a thyroid hormonal imbalance, which went undetected for years. This triggered type 1 diabetes — an autoimmune disorder, which basically means your body's immune system attacks your own organs. In my case, it destroyed my beta cells in my pancreas, my beta islet cells, I think that's what they're called - and that is what kills this, that is what kills the secretion of insulin. And that is when my sugar levels go really high. Long story short - normal levels are 4-7 millimole per liter. Mine was 90 when I was admitted. A few more days, a couple more days, and probably I would have been in a coma. It was really, really terrible. And I do recall the hospital, I do recall the changing of beds later that night when I was moved to a different ward. There was a nice Malayali nurse. I come from Kerala, where people speak Malayalam, so that was a nice little conversation. And then moved over into a different bed. I guess the next day I was on the real ward - kidney patients all around me, all of them significantly older than me. Probably three times my age, the lot of them. Stressful, stressful, but also fine. What else can I do? I still remember being handed a little cup - you know, for when you can't get up and go piss. I'm just sitting there just doing my business, sitting on the bed and when I think about it, it's debilitating. It's quite shameful, but at that point, I just had my head just wasn't working and that's the only way I could do it. I also had some drip attached to me. They were trying to, like, balance all the sugar in my body or something with, I don't know what. But yeah, it was stressful. And then I met this lovely old man who was walking around with a camera. He had just had a gallbladder operation or something and he was in pain, you could see it in the way he was wincing. He spoke English, but with this Euro accent. What he told me was: he was a lawyer in his own country. Here, he's a janitor. I'm not sure how true that story is or whether I even heard it right because of the way my mind was. I was having auditory hallucinations too during this period if I forgot to mention earlier. And this man just walks up. And when I'm having this conversation with him, he says he's a janitor here now, and he's got an operation. He doesn't have anyone here. His kids are far away. His life seemed really traumatic. But hey, here he was walking around with a really old analog camera taking pictures because this is what he fucking wanted. He wanted to make memories. He wanted to find joy in this debilitating fuck-all condition he's in. And in every sense, that broke me to a very large fucking extent. Because I felt, hey, if this man can be so fucking positive, what do I have to fucking cry about? And I'm sure that did not mean that I woke up the next day and I fucking became the CEO of Google. That's not really what happened. But hey, it was genuine human experience, which I loved. And it was one of those things. Again, I was in the hospital for about three, four days, and finally, I had to be discharged. I got back to my room. The room was a mess. I did not go back straight away - I got into the hotel and that's exactly the picture up top there. After getting discharged, I was in the hotel room in the evening and I was really hungry. I was getting used to insulin and I had like four bananas. And then my sugar, when I checked my sugar level, it said "HI". I panicked. I spoke to Mitra who was my uncle's friend and Mitra is a lovely guy. Mitra is probably the gentlest man I know. I had a four bananas that I remember running back to Mitra taking back into the hospital, and then I was waiting in that department for someone to see me, and then he asked me, what did you eat? And then I just said, yeah, four bananas. And then he said, did you have four bananas? And then I said, yes. And then he said, "okay...you can't do that". Eventually my levels balanced out with insulin, and then they let me come back home. But not before someone came over and gave me some do's and don'ts of what to eat and what not to eat and how I should treat this. But what I distinctly remember is I'm sitting in the room and out in the hall, I can hear the conversations between the doctors and I hear my doctor telling somebody else, maybe his colleagues, about what I've had. And I suddenly hear someone gasp in a lovely posh British accent, "four bananas???". Clearly, she was surprised. That was very funny, and then I loved to tell the story to my parents and make everybody laugh. In about a week, I booked my ticket and came back to India to see my doctors. One flatmate I should mention — not the one I'd had the run-ins with, but another lovely one called Shreya. She was such an important part of that experience at Lilian Knowles house. She was there for me. She was the one speaking to my dad when I was admitted to the hospital. She was the one who made a bunch of payments and stuff for me at that point when I just couldn't do anything. What a lovely person. I have lost touch with her because I'm really, really bad at keeping in touch with people. Back in India, I was in a bit of a limbo. My program director, Blake emailed saying I could defer if I wanted to. It was a traumatic time. I had about a week to think - should I defer or continue? I leaned toward deferring. Hey, everything was going to shit. But then I just could not sit without doing anything. I had to get back and I did not defer. Continued the degree. I was there smashing through my exams. Smashing through classes, taking notes. My parents were there to take care of me. Food was on the table and I was eating well. I was calibrating what I wanna eat. A lot of salads, really watching my sugar levels. I did not have a continuous glucose monitoring system — just the blood-pricking system. I was using it. I was on it. I was making sure I kept it in control. I am a tech guy, so I built out a Streamlit application — wrote all that code from scratch. We didn't have AI then, so I just got the whole thing fucking written up. Tried my best to build a dashboard where I could manually add in my recordings, which I was tracking on an Excel sheet. I took a screenshot and printed it out to bring to a doctor in India. The doctor was really, really impressed with the effort I was putting in. I like impressing people — obviously, that was one of my faults, I guess. But more importantly, I was really happy I was keeping it in the range. I did my courses, got really good marks, and submitted my projects well. I was a fierce student, a perfectionist who loved the idea of learning something new. I loved writing my code, I loved getting things out there. I loved being lost in my own mind capturing my "Creative" ideas for projects and writing them up. I was even maintaining a "Daily blog" of sorts just capturing my writing. In Aug 2021, I finally came back to London. The last time I was here, I was wounded. I contemplated a miserable ending to what I thought would be an incredibly optimistic life. But now I felt stronger. I had beaten the fuck all times of my life. Ofc, I was always going to be a diabetic, but I had lived through a multitude of traumatic experiences in a short span of time. I was strong. Shortly thereafter, I began giving a bunch of interviews for a job. Moved homes to a lovely young professional accommodation in Canary Wharf. Coincidentally, I also got accepted into this spectacular early stage data and AI consultancy called Datatonic where I continue to work hard even now. I graduated from my degree with a distinction. Most of my professors did not know me very well by face, but they knew me. My program manager's quote rings in my ears even to this day - "you did a fabulous job". Yes, Ram. You did.