If I had slept at home I would have slipped into a coma

O'BRIEN ON CHALLENGES OF DIABETES DIAGNOSIS EARLY IN FOOTBALL CAREER

- BY JOE THOMAS

AKE O'Brien’s parents had taken him to see a doctor as a precaution. Within hours it was clear their instincts had saved him from a medical emergency.

There had been signs he was unwell - severe thirst, tiredness that led to naps in the daytime, a loss of weight at a time when he was working hard to try and gain it.

He was 16 though - sport dominated his life and, well, life is rarely straightforward for anyone that age.

That their son was experiencing the telltale signs of diabetes now seems obvious but, back then, there was no reason for it to have crossed their minds.

One afternoon their concern reached a tipping point and by that night the condition crashed into their consciousness amid fears over the teenager's health.

Explaining how the night of his diagnosis unfolded, O’Brien said: “Eventually I was just in my sitting room and my parents noticed that I looked a lot weaker and skinnier than usual.

“I went to the doctor’s for a little checkup to see if there was anything. I wasn’t expecting it to be much. They took my bloods and straight away I was rushed to hospital.”

He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It means his body is unable to create insulin - the hormone that regulates the amount of glucose (sugar) in your blood.

Tracking his blood glucose levels is now an everyday part of life that he had no need to understand before that night.

But the simplest way to highlight just how close he was to trouble is that he was more than 10 times what would have been considered a stable level for him back then.

In some respects, that was a night that defined his life - there was the shock of the hospital run and the urgency with which he was dealt with, followed by the start of an every day battle to ensure his body can function properly.

“I was lucky because that night they said if I had slept at home I would have slipped into a coma,” he says.