My drink order isn’t preference – it’s a matter of life and death

Reclining in my seat at the cinema on a Sunday afternoon, I stuck the straw into the Pepsi Max I’d ordered and took a sip, hoping to switch off my brain for a couple of hours.

I always order a diet drink, because I’m a type 1 diabetic, and I can’t have the ‘full-fat’ version.  

Then something unexpected happened. 

Within 10 minutes, my blood sugar had shot up to dangerous levels and I couldn’t understand why.

My phone buzzed, I looked at it to see my monitor had given me the notification that my blood sugar was now out of range and skyrocketing quickly, my heart dropped; I knew instantly what had happened. 

The staff had given me the wrong drink.

Despite ordering Pepsi Max and double checking with the server, I’d been given the sugary version. And still, despite the fact she’d clearly made a mistake and was in the wrong for it, I blamed myself.

I had actually noticed her place my glass underneath the generic Pepsi tap, but decided to put faith in her, assuming it had been labelled wrong. 

If I drink a sugary drink, it’ll send my blood sugar sky high. My body can’t automatically regulate my blood glucose. I have to do this manually, all by myself.

A simple mistake can land me in the hospital if it results in ketoacidosis, which is what happens when there’s so much sugar running through the bloodstream that it starts to produce acid, slowly poisoning you. 

When I was first diagnosed in 2015, I was on the cusp of a coma, and told I was lucky to be alive.

At its very worst, this condition kills people. Incidents like this can be deadly.

There are other anxieties around going to the cinema as a type 1 diabetic. 

A few years ago, I was trying to subtly administer some insulin using my diabetes monitor (a repurposed phone which is connected to my pump via Bluetooth) inside the cinema, when I was shouted at by an unsuspecting member of the public.

She was sitting behind me, and clearly thought I was using my phone. 

Even after the film finished and the credits rolled, she was aggressive with me, clearly assuming she deserved the upper hand purely because she was older than me. 

I held my tongue that time too – I didn’t explain that I had a legitimate medical reason for using it.

Instead, I sat there and cried, swiftly putting my sunglasses on so no one would see my tears.

This is an experience I now carry with me whenever I visit the cinema. I’ve become incredibly cautious about checking my blood sugar for fear of inconveniencing the people around me, who can’t see the pump I wear in the dark, nor the blood glucose monitor on my arm.

I only do so if I can feel myself dropping low or spiking high, and I’m wary about giving myself injections for the same reason.

That made this situation even more dangerous, when I might have tried to ignore it or not noticed in the dark.

That day I was given a full fat Pepsi, I wanted to enjoy the cinema, which has become a safe place for me to escape. Instead, I sat there and worried while watching the film, as I started to feel increasingly unwell. 

Eventually, I dashed out, and frantically administered some extra insulin. 

I hadn’t eaten anything else, so I knew it was the drink. Sadly, it’s an intuition hard-wired into every single type 1 diabetic; we’re constantly in survival mode, waiting for something to catch us out and send us flying, even when we don’t consent to it.

Luckily the medicine worked in time, and I started to feel better. But it took me a few hours, and disrupted my sleep. I was a zombie at work the next day.

Once the credits rolled, my boyfriend – much bolder and generally more confident than I – wanted to speak to the staff about it and lodge a proper complaint. 

I didn’t want to cause a fuss, so I pleaded with him to leave it alone. I was exhausted, riding down the high I’d thankfully made it through without passing out.

A spike and a crash like this make me feel fatigued, like every ounce of energy has been drained from my system.

In the moment, I feel confused, which doesn’t help when I’m trying to act rationally and fix a spiralling medical situation. 

If I’m hungry when it hits, then that’s too bad: I can’t eat anything until it’s fixed.

But the experience stayed with me, so a few days later, I sent them an email of complaint – I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else, but as I hit send, I felt awful. 

I knew they probably wouldn’t understand, and while they were hugely sympathetic in the end, I was offered two free tickets as an apology. They also made sure each staff member was properly briefed, so it wouldn’t happen again.

While I appreciate the gesture as a peace offering, I don’t care about a free trip to the cinema. I care about my needs being taken seriously in what can be a life or death situation. 

The thing is, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me – I’ve been served sugary drinks in pubs and restaurants before. I fear it will continue to happen to me.

Any institution would recoil in horror at the prospect of serving a person with allergies the thing that triggers a reaction for them, but the response is never the same for type 1 diabetics. 

Ordering a decaf latte or a Diet Coke might seem like a lifestyle choice – but in the wrong circumstances, ingesting sugar can be perilous for me; at worst, deadly.

What I wish people would understand is that, like many others who might either be pregnant or on medications that limit caffeine intake, I don’t have a choice in this. 

I can’t afford to be at the receiving end of someone else’s mistake; for you, it might be a tired afternoon, a simple mishap. 

But for me, it can be the difference between life and death.

And I need venues to take it that seriously. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.