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.
The Novo Nordisk European Diabetes Patient Advocacy Summit was created for patient organizations from all over Europe to gain Insight, Inspiration, Inspiration-and Direction Setting. We heard best practices from other diabetes organisations and the two day conference identifying challenges and barriers in our own countries and what to set as a priority in our countries.
Over six months ago, the Irish health service, the HSE, launched the reimbursement of the flash glucose monitor, the Freestyle Libre, to people with type 1 diabetes aged between 5 and 21 years.
It has been almost 9 months since the HSE announced that the reimbursement scheme would only be open to people with type 1 diabetes aged between 5 and 21 years which led to over 19,000 people signing an online petition to remove this age restriction.
When taking insulin in the morning MAKE SURE BRAIN IS AWAKE AND ENGAGED. Aaarrrg!
I gasped as I completed my insulin dose! Crap! I just realized I used my non exercise day insulin to carb ratio for my breakfast. I wasn’t even distracted by questions from young people, I just wasn’t fully awake.
Thankfully, I noticed it right away and instead of the paramedics giving me a lift home after my walk by way of the hospital, I decided to reduce my background insulin for 2 hours to counteract having more insulin than I needed. Then I adopted the wait and see approach. What other approach is there when you live with diabetes?!?
I did avert a nasty hypo, in fact, my glucose levels were a tad on the high side. So, I corrected and moved on.
From this point forward, I will most definitely MAKE SURE MY BRAIN IS AWAKE AND ENGAGED when taking insulin in the morning.
#LifewithDiabetes
After this hypo happened last February I wrote it down how I was feeling as a way to cope with the aftermath. It really shook me up and felt like a hellish experience. It really shook me up and felt like a hellish experience. I found it today when I was looking for some inspiration for this weeks blog post and the feelings I felt then are still with me six months later. So here is the Hypo Hell and other afterlife terrors.
3 February 2018
I could feel the full force of this hypo by the time I was in the kitchen making my breakfast. This one actually snook up on me: I haven’t had a hypo this bad in a number of weeks maybe even months because I wear a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and it usually gives me a “heads up” so I can ward it off. But this time there was no warning.
The dilemma for me when a hypo presents just before a meal is if I can wait until I’m going to eat anyway instead of having to gobble a couple of glucose tabs (i.e. extra calories) I don’t need. But this one was not going to allow that so I reached for two glucose tablets (6 grams of fast acting carb) to at least take the edge off.
About 5 minutes later, I was trying to eat my toast slowly so as not to slow down the fast acting glucose. I did feel that I wasn’t dropping any lower but I did need the sweat to stop dripping from my forehead and my brain to defog. So I sat trying not to use said brain for 15 minutes.
What happened in the next couple of hours was really what left me feeling wretched - the rebound high. I had taken my usual breakfast insulin dose because I figured that the glucose tablets were enough to correct the low. What I didn’t factor in was the steroids I had on board that have made me very insulin resistant and needing to up my mealtime insulin by quite a lot to keep me in range.
As I started to feel nauseous while grocery shopping I found a place to do a finger check and I was 22 mmols (396 mg):-O I took some more insulin and this time I was more “generous”.
After an hour I could see my cgm arrow point ➡️ and I was reassured. The next hour the arrow pointed down and I was thankfully coming back into range to have lunch. But the rest of the day was very much about being a bit of a couch potato with a sore head.
I really don’t understand how people can think that managing diabetes with insulin is easy! If it’s so easy you can have mine. Seriously!
