November is diabetes awareness month, and World Diabetes Day is Monday the 14th.
I’ve chosen to celebrate World Diabetes Day in different ways over the years, from “Diabetes Daily Doses” of information posts on my Facebook Profile to help my friends and family understand more about living with diabetes to meeting up with fellow people with diabetes like last year in Limerick (this webpage will tell you more about what we did). This year, I have so much going on, well no, just one thing really, and that's college, that I just couldn’t stretch myself to doing something extra. But that’s ok because there are so many people out there who are.
I probably won’t attend any of the virtual World Diabetes Day events that take place on the 14th because it’s a weekday, but I do hope to meet up with a couple of diabuddies on Sunday the 13th for a while. So my contribution for 2022 is a blog post based on some of those “Diabetes Daily Doses” of information from 2016, 2017 and 2018.
What is diabetes?
There are LOADS of websites answering this question and lots of good answers; just have to google but only click on diabetes association websites. For me, diabetes is about not being able to turn food into fuel. I know this is a very simple answer, but this is really what it is. And we all know that if the food we eat cannot be turned into nutrition or energy, we don’t survive. It doesn’t matter if the food is sugar or starch - it all becomes glucose when digested, and glucose is what our brains need to function as well as all of our cells.
Types of Diabetes
There are LOADS of types of diabetes; I think the last count from IDF was 14. Yes, 14!!! Most of us only hear about Type 1 or Type 2, and maybe Gestational Diabetes. Diabetes UK have some great information on many of the different types of D. Knowing what type of diabetes you have is important because different types require different treatments.
Diabetes Awareness - Why is diabetes awareness so important?
Just like there are different types of diabetes, there are different types of diabetes awareness. I wrote a post previously about all the different types of diabetes awareness and why here but the main types of awareness focus on one of these two; awareness of the symptoms of diabetes and awareness of what it’s like to live with diabetes.
Symptom Awareness
Because Diabetes could happen to you! Diabetes can happen to anyone, any age, even if you’re a keep-fit nut ;-) I don't want anyone to be diagnosed with diabetes, but I also don't want you to die from a missed diagnosis. This is why awareness of the symptoms is SO IMPORTANT!
There are many websites now where you can find out if you’re at risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes and do familiarise yourself with the Four T’s of Type 1 Diabetes: Tired, Thirsty, Thin and Toilet - It may prevent someone from ending up in ICU or even save someone’s life. Mine was.
Lived Experience Awareness
Living with diabetes, any type, is so difficult! It is an incredibly complicated condition, so sharing what living with diabetes is like helps us get better diabetes care, and it promotes the importance of investing in research for a cure as well as treatments that make our lives a little easier. This means we have to share our diabetes challenges with the wider world so that they can help us influence the people who make the decisions about what healthcare we receive or where funding for research goes.
Walk in my shoes
Diabetes Education to Protect Tomorrow
Diabetes Education is where I learned how to adjust my insulin to match my body’s needs by going through a list of questions in my head, to figure out how much insulin I needed to take to cover the food I ate. I also learned about the many other factors that affect my glucose levels that need to be considered, such as how active or inactive I am, lack of sleep, stress, adrenaline, and whatever else goes on inside our highly complex bodies to result in glucose levels that are not too high and not too low.
Diabetes education was a rock-solid foundation on which to build my lifelong learning tower of diabetes management. Yet, approximately 50% of our community has not been referred to diabetes education. However, not all diabetes centres offer diabetes education, but many do. Find diabetes education near you at on Thriveabetes webpage on Diabetes Education.
Let me eat cake! Or Sweets, or cake!
Because I can!!! Whether I eat cake or fruit, or porridge, I still have the same problem - I have to figure out how much medication I need to take to deal with any of them. Sometimes I feel that the healthier options are more difficult to deal with than the non-healthy options. Yeah, porridge, I’m looking at you!
Support the ones you love
If someone you know is diagnosed with diabetes, offer them support, not judgement.
Ask us what we need
Don't lecture or nag. It’s not helpful
Don't ask if our glucose numbers are good or bad. It is what it is
Don’t focus on what we are not doing; instead, see what we are
Find more tips on how to support someone with diabetes here
It’s great that social media allow us to see so many people with diabetes doing lots of different things to mark World Diabetes Day and to see lots of meetups taking place and hopefully in 2024 (one more year left in university!!!) I will be in the thick of it and exhausted for a fabulous reason like all of them ;-)