Life for a Child with Diabetes

People with diabetes in Ireland don't have it all when it comes to our diabetes. We don't have huge access to insulin pumps or continuous glucose monitors or structured type 1 diabetes education. Some of our type 1 clinics don't even have diabetes dietitians or diabetes nurse specialists. But, we do have unlimited access to access to insulin!

Do you remember the day you or your child was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? Imagine if the doctor then told you that a vial of insulin cost so much money that you could not afford to buy it. Imagine you lived in a country like India, Haiti, or Ecuador, where no-one else could afford to organise a benefit night to raise money for insulin. What would you do?

"Without insulin, a child with type 1 diabetes will die within a week. In the developing world, many die without being diagnosed; for those who are, their family faces a sickening dilemma: pay for the insulin their child needs to survive or leave him to die." 

This is the situation for a lot of parents of children with type 1 diabetes in these developing countries. How is it possible that almost 100 years after insulin was discovered there are still children in the world dying from type 1 diabetes, not from complications but because they don't have insulin.

These children don't get the chance to worry about the danger of night-time hypos, or the risk of developing complications.

I’m very grateful to my government for paying for all of my diabetes medication and supplies. I know that if I did have to pay for all of it that I would find it extremely difficult financially. But if the government asked me to contribute to the cost in someway I would be able to do that. 

But, the government haven’t asked me and until they do I'm going to donate a little bit every year to the International Diabetes Federation's Life for a Child programme because I'm so lucky to be born where I was born.

Life for a Child is currently helping 14,000 children in 46 countries to have a reliable and steady supply of insulin, while working with the existing healthcare services to strengthen them.

People w/Diabetes are Amazing; People with Type 2

World Diabetes Day 2014 is Friday the 14th of November. This is the third and final instalment of "People with Diabetes are Amazing!" series. The first instalment featured Parents of children with diabetes, the second People with Type 1. 

Meeting other people with diabetes is my inspiration for living well myself with diabetes. They rock! They are so resilient. So, as we approach World Diabetes Day I thought I would celebrate how awesome people with diabetes really are. Next up is...

People with Type 2

There is supposedly safety in numbers and people with type 2 do make up the numbers but I don't think that make people with type 2 feel any safer.

The world's media tries to tell people with type 2 that they brought diabetes on themselves. Yet, they come out ready to take control of their diabetes.

The old breed of person with Type 2 diabetes would have accepted limb amputation, blindness and kidney failure as their fate. The old breed would never have known about diabetes education. They would have known type 2 diabetes as the "Silent Killer".

The new breed of Type 2 person is defiant, resilient, willing to learn new things, has a thirst for the knowledge to manage their diabetes. They want to overcome!

I have met so many people with type 2 and they inspire me as much as my own crowd because they tell me all the time that they are not going to be that old breed of person with type 2. They shall overcome!

Of Notable Mention;

There are many more types of diabetes and people who live with any type are equally amazing. I chose the types because I know a little more about those than I do about LADA or MODY or any of the others.

To ALL people with diabetes and here's to breaking down the barriers!!!

Where to find Diabetes Support in Ireland

We have professional support from our clinics, consultants and diabetes nurse specialists. We also have professional support from Diabetes Ireland, our national diabetes association, who also have a facebook page.

Thankfully, since the take off of social media Diabetes Support Groups are becoming easier to find and peer to peer support for people with diabetes is growing.

Here is a list of what is available nationally in alphabetical order:

Diabetes Support Groups in Ireland

There may be other groups that I don't have details for and I apologize if you are not on the list. If you would like to be included on this list please leave your details in a comment below.

People w/Diabetes are Amazing; People with Type 1

World Diabetes Day 2014 is Friday the 14th of November. This is the second of three installments of "People with Diabetes are Amazing!" series. The first installment was about Parents of children with diabetes.

Meeting other people with diabetes is my inspiration for living well myself with diabetes. They rock! They are so resilient. So, as we approach World Diabetes Day I thought I would celebrate how awesome people with diabetes really are.

I think all people with diabetes are amazing! Life threw us the challenge of living with diabetes at us and it made us feel that no challenge was too much. I have divided my homage into 3 groups of amazingness and next up...

People with Type 1

I actually fall into this group myself but I won't be talking about me. I want to talk about all the amazing people I've met in my support group and all the people with type 1 that I admire out there in the big, big world.

The people with type 1 that I have met over the years are so inspiring, so resilient, so defiant. I've met people who have lived 50 years with type 1, lost their sight because they happened to live with diabetes before so much was discovered about it. People who used to boil glass syringes to sterilize them before they could use them. These people still get up every day and say "no diabetes; you don't win today".

I also love to read about people with diabetes breaking through the barriers that others perceive to be around us; 

- Douglas Cairns, pilot, diabetes advocate
- Kris Freeman, Olympic Skier
- HG Wells, The famed science-fiction author who also helped set up Diabetes UK.
- Kerri Sparling, blogger, author, diabetes advocate.

I read about and am always inspired by people like;

- Stephen Clancy, professional cyclist,

- Catherine Brady, 4th time world champion kickboxer from Dundalk

- Kenneth Sweeney, former senior county footballer; Sligo

- Sierra Sandison, Miss Idaho 2014 who brought the worlds attention to type 1 diabetes.

- Ella Locke, who at 10 years old hiked the 154kms of the Scottish Highland with her dad to raise money for diabetes. 

and many, many, many, more......................

People w/Diabetes are Amazing; Parents of Children with Diabetes

World Diabetes Day 2014 is Friday the 14th of November. I didn't plan this very well but from the 1st of November until the 14th I'm hoping to have a daily diabetes awareness post on my facebook page (fingers crossed). This is the first of three installments of "People with Diabetes are Amazing!" series.

Meeting other people with diabetes is my inspiration for living well myself with diabetes. They rock! They are so resilient. So, as we approach World Diabetes Day I thought I would celebrate how awesome people with diabetes really are.

I think all people with diabetes are amazing! Life threw us the challenge of living with diabetes at us and it made us feel that no challenge was too much. I have divided my homage into 3 groups of amazingness starting with...

Type Awesome - The Parents!

I wanted to start with the people who take care of the little people with diabetes, the people who guide and mentor young people with diabetes, the people who are generally referred at Type Awesome on social media; the Parents of children with diabetes.

How difficult is it to try to figure out what is going on in someone else's body, in particular, a body so tiny he/she doesn't know how to speak yet? Parents of children with type 1 diabetes do this all day every day!

Did you know that most parents of children with type 1 diabetes seldom get a full night's sleep? I survived a couple of months of interrupted sleep with my newborns. I can't imagine doing it indefinitely. Surviving years of that takes something deep down.

Photo from  http://integrateddiabetes.com/ children-with-type-1-diabetes/

A parents worst nightmare is when something happens to their child that threatens their childhood and these parents have to find a way to get past their grief and heartbreak that their child's carefree childhood has been lost, so that they can protect what's left. It isn't easy and it's not something most parents can do alone.

And that's not even half the story; check out blogs from D-Mum, Moira McCarthy or the D-parent bloggers, such as Olly Double on Diabetes UK.

Diabetes and Mental strength

I was reading a blog entry on TypeOneNation.org by Kady Helme recently, about her trial of the artificial pancreas. I was actually really excited to read it because I had imagined that wearing the artificial pancreas would be like not having type 1 diabetes at all. Especially after listening to Aaron Kowalski, JDRF's Vice President of Treatment Therapies at the Friends For Life UK conference in Windsor.

Anyway, it is a well written piece and not at all what I was expecting. I had a "stop-me-in-my-tracks" moment though as I was reading it, where Kady used a phrase that I feel encapsulates the big struggle we face every day in living with type 1 diabetes. The "struggle" that is sometimes there a lot or sometimes there only a little. She wrote; "It wasn't until I was without the AP system that I understood what a mental burden had been lifted.  It was such a treat to have something monitoring my sugar levels every five minutes and reacting to it. I only really had to focus on T1D at mealtimes."

We have lots of daily tasks that we need to do to live well with diabetes and that's what most people think is the difficult part of living with Type 1. But really, the finger sticks and injections are just small things in the big picture. Its what's going through our minds as we continue on with our day beyond the time it takes to complete those tasks. The "what if's", the toing and froing of the guesswork, the checklist of questions we have to go through before we make a decision on how much insulin to take. Questions like; when did I last take insulin and what did I eat at that time? Have I been active this morning? What am I going to do this afternoon, is it going to be active? When am I having my next meal? Will I have time to eat?

Any treatment for type 1 diabetes that can lift that mental burden even just a little is as good as a cure to me.