REBECCA'S REVELATION 'I'VE BEEN GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE!'

After losing an eye, the Hamilton disability sector worker warns young diabetics to take their health seriously

- Cloe Willetts

If there’s one thing Hamilton woman Rebecca Woolly wants young people living with diabetes to know, it’s the importance of taking their health seriously.

As a teenager, the disability sector worker often neglected taking insulin for her diabetes and filled her body with sugar, despite knowing the risks. After all, any tests she did at the doctors came back fine. But when Rebecca hit her twenties, her health suddenly deteriorated and, tragically, she lost her right eye. Five years later, she also underwent a double transplant for a new kidney and pancreas.

Rebecca was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as an eight-year-old after she presented with symptoms including nausea, lethargy and an incessant thirst she couldn’t quench, no matter how much water she drank.

She spent a month in hospital learning how to inject herself with insulin but resented having to do it.

“I had a chip on my shoulder about being different from the other kids,” recalls Rebecca, 49. “I didn’t want to stop playing with my friends to go and inject, which is kind of how I ended up in the place I got to.

“I ate what I wanted and for a long time, I thought I was that one person getting away with it, so I carried on being a little delinquent. Even in my teenage years, I was rebellious and probably drank too much alcohol. All things I obviously regret now.”

Rebecca refers to diabetes as a “silent killer” as people can go for years without showing any worrying test results, and then suddenly it causes damage to organs and tissue, like it did for Rebecca at 26.