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.
When I saw the call for stories of diabetes stigma, I didn’t think I had any experiences to share. However, when I was viewing the live facebook event I started to think about one or two specific times where I felt stigmatised and the more I started to reflect the longer the list got. So here’s a few of my personal experiences of diabetes stigma over my 28 years of diabetes.
50% of People with Type 1 Diabetes Funded by HSE for Glucose Sensor Technologies. 65% of people funded for CGM sensors are over the age of 21 years. I’m not a math genius or a health economist or even a super intelligent person but even I can see that if the age restriction on Flash was removed and we had a choice, the HSE would save money.
