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.
Thirty years of diabetes means thirty years of diabetes care as a health “service user”. In my previous 30 years of diabetes post, I focused on how my diabetes management has changed significantly. This post is about how I've been a healthcare service user. I’ve changed my care a lot because it took me some time to find the care I needed.
Since 2018 I’ve been getting emails from people with diabetes in Ireland asking about the availability of the tubeless insulin pump, Omnipod, made by Insulet. When companies began to announce their new pumps being available in Ireland, I began to suspect that Omnipod was either not approved or Insulet had not applied for the tender. So I decided to find out which it was. The missing pump piece.
There is no such thing as a diabetes holiday or time off from diabetes, is there? When we go on holidays abroad, we deal with unfamiliar foods and their associated carbohydrate content, completely different routines with different activities, aka exercise, different sleep patterns, and hot climates. Taking diabetes on holiday can feel like anything but a holiday. My post this week is about dealing with diabetes when on holiday and how, for me, on my holiday last summer, it was so much more work to manage than when I’m at home.
Copyright @BloodSugarTrampoline
My family’s holidays normally involve flying across the “pond” to visit with my in-laws. We fly over to one place, and most of the family comes to visit us. This has worked well for the 21 family members up until recent years, but now that the grandkid generation is becoming young adults, this is not feasible. So for our 2022 trip, we decided to visit those who lived the farthest and see all of my husband’s brothers, sisters, their spouses and their children where they happened to be at the time of our visit. And by Jove, we saw everyone and then some. We visited six cities, in three states, in three weeks!
Ok, back to diabetes on holiday. Moving locations so much, different kitchens, completely different restaurants, different hotels, different schedules, active days, less active days, the heat and humidity (32 degrees Celsius) and being outdoors meant that it was difficult to figure out from one day to the next what the carb guesstimate was and as mentioned in a previous post I’m terrible at that.
One morning, I had a bagel for breakfast with a best guess carb estimate; it wasn’t my first bagel of the trip, but my blood sugars shot up to 18 mmols. We were planning on doing a lot of walking in the morning, so I was reluctant to correct it too soon and opted for a let’s ‘watch and wait’ approach. I also did a needle change that morning, so I was very anxious that this might be the problem too. I decided not to reduce my background insulin for the exercise until my levels were at least back down to 11 mmols which thankfully it did within two to three hours. Once I had “exercise mode” activated on my pump, my numbers played nice for the rest of outdoor time and, surprisingly, for the rest of the day, even with the intense heat at a water park, a pizza dinner and an ice cream dessert. And even with exercise mode still activated. :-O I only realised that I forgot to switch off exercise mode the next day when thinking ahead for another hike.
I did have a very bad low at 1 am, though. One of those ones where my brain struggled to figure out that I needed sugar and where I kept it. Then, of course, there was a rebound high for HOURS afterwards. Sigh!!! Then, to top it ALL off, I had to insert a new CGM sensor just before breakfast. But at least the sensor was warmed up and active for day two.
It was at this point in the holiday that I was a little tired of diabetes, but I refused to let it spoil the trip. I decided it was only three weeks of my life, and when I got back home, all would be normal diabetes again. And that was my diabetes holiday!
I know lots of people with diabetes are planning their holidays at the moment and might be focused on getting through airports, but I wrote this as an experience of what happens when you get there.
April 2023 marked five years since the revolutionary flash glucose monitor, the Freestyle FS Libre, became free for people with type 1 diabetes in Ireland, however, only to those aged between the age of four and twenty-one years, which is approximately 20% of our population. This post reflects on the lack of progress there has been in making FS Libre available to those over age 21 years in Ireland.
In April, I celebrated my 30-year diaversary, meaning I’ve lived with diabetes for 30 years. The tools I use to help me manage my diabetes have changed dramatically in that time, but most of those changes have only taken place in the last ten years or less. Here is my diabetes journey through the tools I have had access to.
