When I joined the Irish diabetes online community #IREDOC in 2010, I had no idea where that journey would take me. In fact, I didn’t think it would take me anywhere but to a better place with my diabetes; all I wanted was to meet other people with diabetes and to learn from them.

Ten years later, being part of the DOC has taken me to so many places I never imagined possible. From support group organiser to blogger to event organising to public speaker and advisor. In this journey, I’ve acquired some labels in an effort to answer a question I am asked many times “what do you do?”.

My glucose sensor has been the best tool I’ve had access to in my 27 years of diabetes. However, it is a piece of technology and, like all tech, it will and does fail occasionally. In this instance, this was my first definite false low glucose reading caused by compression ie me sleeping soundly on my transmitter.

Storm Jorge gave me the opportunity to tune into the live stream of Type 1 Diabetes Rise of the Machines #T1DRotM, a fantastic event on technology used in type 1 diabetes management and is a collaboration between people with Diabetes, industry and NHS representatives.

Last Friday, I attended Diabetes Ireland’s health professional conference in Dublin as a guest speaker with fellow person with diabetes and DIYAPS user, Tomas Mahony. It was a very interesting day and a very different conference to the ones I’m used to. I attended four of the presentations which were all really interesting for me

I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a workshop on “The Value of Peer Support from the Perspective of People with Diabetes, Clinicians & Educators” at the Diabetes Self Management Alliance DSMA Conference in Sweden in January to encourage support for diabetes peer support. However, this workshop was also a learning experience for me personally. ALWAYS something new to learn!!!

I can’t believe that my first post of 2020 is in February!!! WOW! The first couple of weeks of January I did nothing blog, website or diabetes related and it was wonderful but I did miss writing. Then there was a general election called, a conference event, advocacy group meeting and speaking event to prepare for, not to mention lots of thinking about “what next?” for Thriveabetes, and taking some personal time to figure out what’s next for me. So, February is my first blog post!