John Peel 'relieved' to be diabetic

[p_reavy@...]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/showbiz/newsid_1573000/
1573676.stm

Radio DJ John Peel has revealed that he has been diagnosed with 
diabetes after years of feeling run down - but said he had feared the 
cause could have been much worse. 

Peel, 62, is the only original BBC Radio 1 DJ still left at the 
station and said he had been feeling progressively worse and had to 
go to sleep up to three times a day. 

He still presents a two-hour show from his home studio for Radio 1 
three times a week. 

He felt "strangely pleased" that it was diabetes after worrying that 
he was suffering from a terminal illness, he said. 
 
"I've felt terrible, off and on, for years, but had assumed it was 
part of the ageing process," he wrote in the latest edition of the 
Radio Times magazine. 

"Worst of all was the fatigue. I had reached the point at which I 
needed three lie-downs a day. 

"I also felt, as Led Zeppelin would have put it, dazed and confused." 

He was diagnosed at the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmonds, 
Suffolk, and is now treating himself with insulin. 

"At last, all the symptoms I had been generating and self-diagnosing 
as terminal had been gathered together, given a name and a treatment. 

Anniversary 

"The treatment, insulin, I inject into my abdomen, an area in which 
nature has been particularly generous to me." 

"I'd rather not be doing it at all, of course, but I have to say I 
feel better already. Much better." 

Peel was the first DJ in the UK to give exposure to punk, reggae, hip-
hop and rap, and recently celebrated his 40th anniversary as a DJ 
with a party where Pulp, Nick Cave and Billy Bragg performed.