There are lots of people on social media doing their bit for diabetes awareness, and this is fantastic. However, raising awareness seems to be a big buzzword these days, but what does that really mean, and how do we raise awareness of something effectively? Should I do it by sharing a random image on my Facebook feed that doesn’t tell any of my friends anything at all? Or should I use my social media to share information?
In this post, I will provide a short summary of the information revealed from parliamentary question responses on how many people in Ireland use insulin pumps, what clinics provide them as a treatment option and how many new pump starts are done each year.
My diabetes diagnosis shattered my confidence in my ability to take care of myself, and my plan quickly became to just get through the rest of the term, move home for the summer to my previous summer job and figure the rest out over the summer. Adjusting to my new normal of living with diabetes began while I was still in hospital, or did it?
I realised last year that in all the blog posts I’d done these last 13 years, I have never shared my diagnosis story, so here it goes. My diabetes diagnosis is not unique; many of my friends with diabetes share similar experiences; however, some people end up very ill and may have spent time in intensive care units in hospitals. Thankfully this was not the case for me, but I did feel like I was dying.
The purpose of the document is to provide an estimate of the number of people who are using HSE-funded Flash and CGMs in Ireland and to prompt a discussion around access equality. I believe we need to talk about how fair it is that so many are approved for HSE funding and why some people are still being made to pay.
Food is the single biggest influence on blood glucose levels when you have diabetes. The topic of food and diabetes will come up in every conversation. It is a massive minefield with so many people offering advice and so many people who are passionate about a single way of eating with diabetes. DISCLAIMER; I'm not a nutrition expert or anything even close but here are the food choices I've made over my 24 years of living with type 1 diabetes.
One of my personal pet peeves is the assumption that diabetes is only about avoiding sugary treats and not the whole carb-boodle. In case you haven’t heard this before PEOPLE WITH DIABETES CAN EAT SUGAR!
When I was diagnosed with type 1 in 1993, I was told that sweets were mostly not allowed. I remember being told if I had a craving for something sweet to drink Diet 7-Up?!?! I very quickly learned what a load of nonsense that was - thank goodness!
Over the years, I’ve experimented with ways I want to eat, with the many different ways to eat healthy (there’s more than one way) and I’ve read about all the different ways other people with diabetes eat. I used all of these resources to determine what food plan works best for me and my diabetes and I'm happy with what I ended up with.
I have also learned a lot about how insulin works in my body, a little about the glycaemic index of food and how the food is likely to affect my glucose levels. With this knowledge, I can create a “designer” dose of insulin such as pre-meal bolus and extended bolus. I can also “sugar surf”, Micro-bolus and Super Bolus.
What works for meMy overall approach is that I eat healthy but also in keeping with what worked best for our family of four. Sometimes the microwave dies on leftover night and Fast Food is just about fast enough to get us out the door for extracurriculars!
Most days, I eat what’s best for my glucose levels this might be low-medium carb and some days, it might be a carb load. But when the occasion calls for it I eat what looks good and what’s going to taste amazing.
There are so many food choices. Loads and loads of them.
As people with diabetes, we all live completely different lives and there is no one size fits all diabetic diet. So, you get to choose what you want to eat, the way you want to eat and then you come up with your own plan: the one that works best for you.
Do you have any Christmas traditions in your family? We had a couple when I was growing up and now as we have created our own family we have created new ones. Apparently though, my husband doesn’t think we have any! The other day, his colleague asked him if our family had any Christmas traditions. To which he replied that off hand he couldn’t think of any other than going into town on Christmas Eve afternoon and not being able to find any gingerbread men! Yes, that is one, but not an intentional one.
Of course, most of our Christmas traditions have come about because the children started insisting on them. “Oh but we always do it for Christmas”!!!
But some of our traditions have come from our previous generation. The one I most love is the Christmas tree ornament which has been passed down from my in-laws. Every year, as part of your gift box, there was an individualised Christmas Tree ornament. All of my husband’s siblings got the same ornament but with their name and the year on it. When they all moved into their own homes the ornaments followed. So when we had our first christmas tree in our own home we had ornaments from my husbands childhood. Some were even handmade! It was so special to decorate our tree with such precious ornaments.
I have continued this tradition with my own children. Every year, they get an ornament from a special trip we’ve taken.
What does this have to do with diabetes? Last year, my sister-in-law’s family gifted us one such ornament. I have some very special sister in laws, I have to tell you!
Number 1, it’s Lego which is cool anyway. But if you can make it out my Lego persona is a figure wearing a Diabetes UK top. I have no idea where she got it but I think it’s the coolest idea ever!!!
Happy Christmas Everyone! Thank you so much for reading my blog posts and thank you for all the likes and comments. I’ll be back in 2018.
Mid October, I went to the DiabetesSisters Weekend for Women conference Alexandria, Virginia. See disclaimer at the end. One of the outstanding presentations I attended was by Thriveabetes 2016 speaker, Gary Scheiner’s presentation on “Making use of the Glycaemic Index”. This should not be a surprise to anyone has read Gary’s book “Think Like a Pancreas”. I will be honest here; when I heard the words “Glycaemic Index” I pretended I didn’t. And the reason is that several years ago, when it became a thing that was relevant to diabetes management, I tried to learn but I found it completely and utterly confusing. So I went to Gary’s talk as a skeptic.
BUT! As always Gary puts the information together well. See his blog posts here.
He started by saying that the glycemic index is the speed glucose enters the blood in the first two hours. It does not measure how fast foods enter the blood as glucose beyond that or how long it takes at all. A-ha! Ok so glycemic index is useful information for first two hours. I feel exonerated now.
This is hugely relevant to my diabetes management because I know that my rapid acting insulin peaks in approx 2 hours and that I might need additional insulin doses after that to cover the glucose released into my blood after the two hours.
The glycemic index is measured from 0 to 100. The closer to 100 a Food is, the higher its glycemic index is and the quicker the glucose hits your blood.
Here is a snapshot of the other things I learned;
Some additional pieces of information not related to glycemic index but valuable.
In summary, glycemic index important to people with diabetes because:
So, I’m glad that I learned all of this and I’m glad that I don’t have to waste any more of my time trying to figure it out because it makes more sense to me now. And It may help me to know the glycemic index of a Food I’ve never tried before so that I can figure how to deliver my insulin (pre-meal, at meal or extended Bolus).
Disclaimer: Diabetes Sisters paid for my conference registration and accommodation but also gave me a contribution towards my travel costs. All they asked for in return was that I would write a blog post about the conference which I had to do anyway because I learned so much that needs to be shared;-) And I wrote here about how I was selected.
Back in October, I had a steroid injection in my hip. And yes, it drove my glucose levels bananas! For those of you who may not be aware of it, steroids are one of the medications that truly mess up glucose numbers for lots and lots of people. The ultimate craziness only lasted two to three days but the residual crazy lingered a couple of weeks.
I have been complaining about my right hip for some time and I finally did something about it in September 2016. I went to my GP. He referred me to my physiotherapist and we did some “process of elimination” exercises. They didn't work. So then I went for an MRI and was referred to a rheumatologist.
At least now, we think I know what is wrong with my hip! It would seem both my physiotherapist and my rheumatologist agree that I have bursitis. And my rheumatologist injected steroids to reduce the swelling. If you have diabetes and you have steroids that plays absolute havoc with blood glucose.
However, no one could tell me how many days, weeks, months the glucose madness would go on for and how severe it would be.
Prior to my injection my diabetes management was going fairly well with just the usual ups and downs. I had the shot mid morning and my glucose levels didn’t feel the effect of the injection until after lunch. But after lunch my numbers remained in the high teens until the early hours of the next morning. On day two, I noticed that if I increase my mealtime insulin significantly more than usual it would keep them in check. However, if I forgot to make the increase then I struggled to bring my numbers back down for hours.
Then the effect of the steroid started to wane slowly over the next two weeks and I had the opposite problem: trying to keep my glucose levels above hypo level. I adjusted insulin doses slowly and only making one or two changes at a time to bring them back to my normal diabetes levels (?!?!).
I was grateful that not only was I aware that this would more than likely happen but that both my endocrinologist, rheumatologist and physiotherapist reminded me it would. I'm probably going to have another dose in January but now, at least, I have a good idea of what to expect.
One of the factors not included in Diatribe’s 22 factors that influence glucose levels is the weather. Sometimes the weather plays with my diabetes management. And here’s how. Do you remember that really, really wet day we had last week? It seems like a distant memory now and I don’t think it had a name, like a storm name, but most of the country was flooded under a yellow weather warning.
When I got up that morning and look out the window I thought “Nope, I’m not walking, I don’t mind being wet and drippy but not that wet!” I was disappointed because most days I love my walk. It clears my head as I inhale clean fresh energy and exhale stress. I swing my arms vigorously and loosen up my neck and shoulders. I had missed my walk the day before due to a doctor's appointment so I was doubly disappointed.
So, with my daily constitutional off the menu, I took my “no-walk” breakfast insulin dose, which tends to be twice what I take if I am walking and off I drove the kids to school.
However, as I was dropping the teen and preteen to school the rain wasn’t that bad. So,I changed my mind (GASP)…. but how can I avoid a hypo seeing as I’ve taking all this insulin without using calories to prevent the low glucose reaction that will surely follow?
I decided to turn my background/basal insulin down to zero for one hour on my insulin pump. Yes, it was going to take an hour to take effect but it was better than a severe hypo. At least it might soften the blow.
Now, if I was on injection pens there is no way I could have avoided preventing a low without glucose.
So was I successful? Weeelll, kind of. I did have a hypo. A doosy at 2.8mmols but it didn’t feel as bad as it was and I didn’t feel like I had to consume the entire kitchen just about a dozen small jellies.
Compared to most hypos this one rebounded quite quickly and not too high. However, I did spend most of the day with glucose levels that were more elevated than my usual.
And there you have it, diabetes the spontaneity killer and weather the diabetes havoc-er.
