A 33-year-old woman living with Type One diabetes has urged fellow diabetics to begin taking measures to ensure they have enough insulin after her local chemist was unable to provide her with her prescription.

Natalie Waterson from Lisbellaw was diagnosed with diabetes when she was nine years old and since then has relied on insulin to regulate her blood sugar level.

Type One diabetes causes the level of glucose (sugar) in your blood to become too high. It happens when your body can’t produce enough of a hormone called insulin, which controls blood glucose.

Natalie usually receives four boxes of Novarapid insulin to use in her insulin pump. However last Tuesday when she went to get her prescription she was told that there was none in stock.

“I went into a bit of a panic because I my insulin pump usually holds 315 units and I had only 160 units left in the insulin pump,” explained Natalie. “And I didn’t know at that stage when or if they could get anymore of it and I was going right, the heart started racing a bit, this isn’t good.

“But I have to say my local chemist, they were fantastic they even sent out an email across Northern Ireland asking if anybody had it and if they could spare and they were going to actually drive themselves and pick them up.”

The chemist was able to source one box from the South West Acute Hospital but with Natalie being dependent on the insulin to survive this cannot be an ongoing situation for her.

“With the insulin pump you are only allowed to take it off for an hour before having to reattach and because it’s only short acting insulin it only stays in your system for four hours.

“After that there it would mean no insulin in my system at all and my blood sugar would just go up and I would end up very very sick. If I don’t have it, its life threatening.”

Natalie was told that there had been problems with the supplier and that instead of an order of 12 the chemist received only four.

With stockpiling of medicines due to Brexit looming, Natalie said that she was told that there had been issues because of this.

“I read into it that the companies are stockpiling it. But they were meant to get an order in but it didn’t come in and then thankfully they did get an order in. They were supposed to get 12 boxes, only four came in.

“It’s a knock-on effect it really is because you cannot live without it. It is essential. “

And Natalie now wants to make diabetics and those who look after anyone who lives with diabetes to start stockpiling or getting in touch with their chemists to make sure that there is enough stock of what they need.

“It is just to let people know this is already happening before we even know what is happening with Brexit and just to let people know to start stockpiling their insulin.

“It’s horrible to think that somebody could end up dying because of no insulin.”