A MOTHER-OF-TWO from Yate has thanked her sons for saving her life every day.

Rachael Jay has Type 1 diabetes and regularly goes into a ‘hypo’ because of the severity of her condition.

But both her boys, Damien, 14, and Jacob, aged just three, have learnt how to administer the medicine their mum needs.

Rachael, 36, said: "I don’t know where I would be without them. Damien was four when he first brought me out of a diabetic hypo and he has been helping me ever since.

"But recently he went away for a week and now Jacob has starting taken over too. It is amazing."

The family, of Cranleigh Court Road, live with Rachael’s diabetes as best they can but always in the knowledge she could become ill very quickly.

"I was diagnosed when I was six," said the single mum. "It was worse when I was younger but now it is deteriorating again.

"One minute my sugar levels can be low then they are high so the doctors and nurses constantly change my insulin intake.

"The worst part about it is that I get no warning if I am going into a hypo."

Damien, a pupil at King Edmund Community School, and Jacob, who attends St Mary’s Nursery School in Yate and the Yate Opportunity Group on Cranleigh Court Road, both know what to do the minute their mum starts to look ill.

"Just the other day we went to the shops and all I can remember was Jacob sat in his buggy asking me if I was okay," said Rachael, who has lived in Yate for 10 years.

"I said I was fine but he knew I was ill so he did a finger blood test and got me some Lucozade.

"He can make a sugary cup of tea with some help and I know if I needed one he could call for an ambulance."

She added: "I can experience a problem literally once or twice a day.

"I just want to say thank you to them both. They do all this themselves and without them I really don’t know where I would be."