Niki Bedsom was diagnosed at 28 years old, only a year ago. Just a few months after her type 1 diabetes, Niki learned she was pregnant. On top of learning blood sugar management as an insulin-dependent type 1, Niki suddenly had to learn how to manage her blood sugar amidst the challenges of pregnancy, too.
Before her diagnosis, Niki was a barefooted, free-spirited, water-bound ocean fanatic. She was spending more time on a boat in the middle of the ocean than she ever spent on land. And type 1 diabetes challenged that part of her life, too.
Today, Niki is a mother to her beautifully healthy baby girl, Mollie, and she shares her tumultuous yet successful journey in this interview.
Can you describe your awesomely wild career on the ocean before your diagnosis? What was your job like? Where you traveled, etc.
Niki: Before I was diagnosed, I was a self-confessed hedonist and full-time wandering nomad. I’d decided early on that a conventional life was not for me and brief travels around Russia and Dubai set in the wanderlust in a big way. Upon finishing university I set off to escape the Baltic English climate and find adventure. After spending a season as a Vodka Bunny girl in Malia (think ears, tail, bow tie, buckets of vodka shots to sell and nightclubs) it was on to more exotic shores. New Zealand was the first stop, then Australia and Bali to play with the monkeys…
Next back to England for a quick hiatus to see my mum where I managed to babble my way onto the BBC2 reality TV show Michel Roux’s service (and made the awful discovery that my voice sounds like Sid the Sloth from Ice Age on camera). I had a blast working in two bars after that, before I got cold again.
Next on the cards was South East Asia so the backpack was reloaded and I was soon stood in Bangkok with my sunglasses and a Lonely Planet, soaking up the melting pot of sights, sounds, smells and gloriousness that is Khao San road. The next year travelling Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia was the most extraordinary experience, I fell in love, fell out of love, lived, partied, learnt and made the best of friends.
Running out of money, I hitch hiked my way from Kuala Lumpur to a tiny island in the south of Thailand called Phi Phi. There I lived for a year, with no shoes, no rules, permanently in some stage of inebriation and earning 8 pounds a night. I was in love with life. I’d managed to get a job on a yacht doing day trips and at the end of the year 8 of us did a 3 month trip on the boat from Phi Phi to Bali, it was the most remarkable experience of my life and cemented the budding idea that I wanted to work on the sea.
As piracy is frowned upon, I decided to become a stewardess on luxury private yachts. After a three month stint around India and Nepal it was off to Fort Lauderdale to get a job. I managed to get one on a beautiful 112-ft sailing yacht, they flew me to the Caribbean and then we crossed the Atlantic to hang out in the land of beautiful people otherwise known as Scandinavia for the season. After that I flew to France to join another boat and it was here I came unstuck…
And now your diagnosis story: how did your symptoms evolve? How long were you able to dismiss or ignore them before they became so severe, etc? How did you feel emotionally? You found out you were pregnant before your diagnosis?
Niki: As with most things with me my diagnosis wasn’t ‘normal’ in as much as I had no symptoms. As I was joining a new boat I had to have an interview with the owners and they noticed that my leg was jiggling (a bad habit I’ve had forever and a by-product of being such a highly charged person I think!) they asked for a routine medical. Fine by me.
Sitting in the waiting room of the doctors I remember thinking that, as lunch the previous day had turned into quite a boozy affair, I was really looking forward to going back to bed. In the doctor’s office he checked him blood pressure, eyes, urine sample… and then he looked at me strangely as I was rummaging for my phone and said, “There’s a lot of sugar in this.” “Ok, what does that mean, too much Rose last night?” “No. I’ve never seen levels like this in someone who wasn’t diabetic.” “…What…”
The next three days I was in and out of hospital like a fiddler’s elbow and by the end of it resembled a pin cushion. Finally it was confirmed, I was a type 1 diabetic. Could I go downstairs and speak to the lady about my new life? I had no thirst, no weight loss, no blurry vision. I felt the same as I always did: happy if a little hungover. It was like a daze, a nightmare, like an impossibility.
Snapshots of things, a lady telling me that today would be my last cigarette. I remember she had a big droopy bottom lip like a cow, I remember wanting to grab it and punch her in the face until she wasn’t there anymore. I’ve never been one to live on the rails but to say I went off them was an understatement. I blew them to pieces. I drank myself into oblivion, took it out on my family and sobbed on my best friends.
Life took on a new darkness, for the first time I looked at people with a bitter envy, and I’m ashamed to say I would stare at them and think they are just doing 9 to 5’s in England, why me, why me, why why why…. The me that I loved, wild, free, ME, she was gone forever and I cried and cried and cried. For the first time in 28 years I slept in the same bed as my mum.
And then my boat said they would still take me. I had to take this, I took a long hard look at myself and knew I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps and realise that life post pancreas was just that… life. If I wanted to go backpacking again, I may have to leave out a few pairs of shorts to make room for injections, but I could go. It was something that I’d always taken for granted before, and something that I never will again.
It must’ve been beyond overwhelming to be diagnosed and find out you’re pregnant in the same few months…how did you deal? How did you cope? What helped you take on the steep learning curve of type 1 diabetes?
Niki: It was 2 months after my diagnosis that I made the fateful trip back to Fort Lauderdale to see my boyfriend, our relationship was falling apart and it was make or break. I didn’t know it but by the time I left there to join my boat in the Caribbean, I was pregnant. I didn’t do the test until 5 weeks later on Boxing Day in Antigua, and I remember staring at those two little lines like… Holy. Shit.
It was too much to process, to comprehend and googling being diabetic and pregnant was just about the biggest mistake I could of made. If I wasn’t terrified before I was after that. So I called my long suffering best friend back in England who phoned the NHS and relayed instructions. I also emailed my diabetic nurse and told her the news. After she’d stopped having kittens she sent me a step by step guide on what to do, what my blood sugar ranges should be and how to achieve them.
I didn’t know what to do, all I knew was there was a tiny little thing inside me and it needed me. I knew I had to look after it. My adventures trying to do that in Antigua whilst working on a yacht whose crew thought I’d gone insane as I went from the biggest drinker and smoker on the boat to a teetotaler who wouldn’t sunbathe (Zika virus) is a whole other story.
Eventually of course I had to leave the boat and return to England. At the end of my pregnancy the two HBA1C’s I’d had were 4.7% and 4.8%. I did a crash course in diabetes and beating those numbers down because I had to… because it wasn’t just for me anymore. I learnt to carb count everything, I did endless tests on how soon to take insulin before certain foods, bedtime reading became the glycemic index, I gave up crumpets (ouch), and permanently had jelly beans on my person to combat the lows.
That said: once I’d got the hang of it it was very doable, I was checking my blood sugar 9 times a day which even my diabetic obstetrician said was too much, but I didn’t find it too much of a burden. Diabetes had thoroughly shaken me up and threatened everything I loved – It wasn’t going to hurt my baby too.
How has type 1 diabetes changed your career? Would you have changed your job anyways because of Mollie or would Mollie become a little barefoot pirate and go along for the ride?
Niki: The last boat that I worked on was awesome but I think I was lucky that they kept me on with diabetes. This is simply because diabetes is one of the few conditions that affects your seafarers medical, an essential document. I could still have got one, but it would of had a big red ”restricted” stamped over it with the conditions that I would have to stay in coastal waters no further than 5 miles from land, and for a career that involves crossing the Atlantic normally twice a year, that’s a fairly big (and unjust) problem. It is also a fairly big problem to be pregnant or have a baby in the yachting industry, and with the two of those combined its safe to say that I have said goodbye to luxury yachting. For now at least.
That said, I fully intend to return to being a barefoot pirate with my new tiny protege in tow. Its too cold for us here in England, and there are many other ways to do yachting that don’t have so much red tape. Like our own boat for instance!! The one thing that is for sure is that the adventure continues!
Where are you today in your life with type 1 diabetes? How are you feeling about it? What goals or questions or fears do you have? What’s been the hardest part vs. the easiest part?
Niki: Mollie is 7 weeks old now, and a little cracker although both of us are presently nocturnal. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f609.png" alt="