Most people with diabetes have faced shame and judgement: 'It's as voluntary as getting a cold'

When Sam Buchanan was diagnosed with diabetes, his biggest concern was that he would not be allowed to go to sleepovers. An understandable worry, considering he was 10.

“Shit,” he remembers thinking.

“I didn’t have anyone to look up to who was living a normal life or high-achieving lifestyle. I had this condition and I didn’t have anyone much older than me to talk to who had the condition. For myself and my parents, it was quite daunting. What would the future entail?”

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Buchanan had been hospitalised, hours away from slipping into a coma, when doctors discovered he had type 1 diabetes.

Now a 28-year-old actor, best known for his roles in BBC sitcom Such Brave Girls and the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, Buchanan is speaking out about his diabetes to help eradicate misconceptions and stigma.

“When I got into my profession, I always said to myself that if I got to a point in my career where I had any amount of public image, I would be able to get involved and help shed a light on how I live my life. I like to think there might be some kids and parents out there that might look at how it hasn’t stopped me from doing anything and think of it as inspirational,” Buchanan adds.

More than 12 million people in the UK live with diabetes or prediabetes – but stigma and misconceptions continue to surround the condition.

New research from Diabetes UK, the charity for which Buchanan is an ambassador, shows that 86% of people with type 1 diabetes have experienced blame or judgement for their condition. Three quarters (76%) of people with type 2 diabetes have experienced the same.

Colette Marshall, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: “For far too many people with diabetes, managing their physical health is only part of the challenge. Every day, people tell us they feel blamed, judged or made to feel like their diabetes is their fault. That’s simply wrong.   No one living with diabetes should feel ashamed.”

Just under three quarters (74%) of people with type 1 diabetes said that others make unfair assumptions about what they can and cannot  do because of their condition. 

Buchanan has experienced this throughout his life. He says people have often said to him: “I don’t understand why you got it because you’re in good shape.” He once got out his pen to inject insulin and a woman said to him: “Couldn’t you do that in the bathroom?”

Half of people living with diabetes have missed healthcare appointments due to a fear of stigma, Diabetes UK found.

“In my opinion, a lot of stigma just comes from lack of education. I know so much about it and my partner does and my family does because they’ve had to be educated because of me. But if you don’t know, you don’t know,” Buchanan says.

The actor has read scripts which have had lines promoting misconceptions around diabetes, like a character referring to a pile of doughnuts as “diabetes on a plate”.

“Particularly for type 1, diabetes is as voluntary as getting a cold,” Buchanan adds. “When I was diagnosed, I was a skinny little 10-year-old boy playing football five times a week. I was fit as a fiddle. There’s nothing to be done about it. A lot of people, when they eventually clock me injecting or I tell them I have diabetes, they’re really shocked.”

Buchanan says there have been times where he has put pressure on himself to work even when his blood sugar has dropped to dangerous levels. He remembers being on set and working on a complex scene with lots of dialogue, and his vision started to blur and he could not remember his lines – both clear signs of a hypoglycemia or a ‘hypo’.

“I had to apologise to the actor and have a coke and sit down for a minute,” Buchanan recalls. “We were filming a TV soap so it was moving very fast. It was a crew of around 100 people and everyone sat there in silence as I just had my coke. In an industry where time is money, feeling like you sometimes have to slow things down is not a nice feeling.”

Buchanan has become much better at looking after his health, he says, but there are still moments where he struggles to prioritise it over his work.

He adds: “There have been times where I’ve been receiving direction or notes or I’m in a conversation with someone and the absolute last thing I want to do is stop everything because I need to go have some jelly babies. My professional mind doesn’t let me do it. Sometimes I find myself holding out for the right moment to go and sort myself out. No one has made me feel that way. That’s me having high standards for myself.” 

Diabetes UK’s  ‘Strike Out Stigma’ campaign is on calling for people to “move past the misconceptions and judgement that surround diabetes” to “create a society that leads with compassion and understanding”.

Buchanan is supporting this campaign and calls for “broader education and understanding of the condition” and says that with this, hopefully “the stigmas and triggers that we see will slowly start to dissipate”.

And he wants to stress that diabetes was not a death-sentence to sleepovers or anything else he has wanted to achieve.

If he had to give advice to his 10-year-old self or anyone newly diagnosed with diabetes, he would say: “Do your best to take control of your blood sugars. Take your insulin pens everywhere. Don’t abuse it or not give importance to it. Later in life, it will start to affect you negatively if you haven’t controlled it properly. But if you have well-controlled diabetes, you can do anything you want to do.”

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