November is diabetes awareness month, and World Diabetes Day is Monday the 14th. I’ve chosen to celebrate World Diabetes Day in different ways over the years, from “Diabetes Daily Doses” of information posts on my Facebook Profile to help my friends and family understand more about living with diabetes to meeting up with fellow people with diabetes like last year in Limerick (this webpage will tell you more about what we did). This year, I have so much going on, well no, just one thing really, and that's college, that I just couldn’t stretch myself to doing something extra. But that’s ok becau ..read more

On October 4th, the latest version of the Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor CGM, the G7 became available in Ireland, the UK and some other countries. I was busy attending college lectures and tutorials, so I was gathering information about this latest product from the diabetes community #DOC in Ireland #IREDOC and abroad until I could accept an invitation to talk with our Irish Dexcom Representatives for an update. This happened on Thursday last. DiaTribe, and Kamil from Nerdabetic have both provided great information on the differences between the G6 and the G7, which would be good to look at ..read more

I started using a brand new-to-Ireland pump, the Tandem T:Slim insulin pump with Control IQ, on July 6th. Then, on the 16th of July, I went on holiday to America, where I travelled to six cities in three weeks, got home for a night but the next day flew back to the US for another 5 days due to tragic circumstances. So, me and my pump have not had a typical beginning, and I’ve spent very little time thinking about my diabetes or doing anything with it. However, this insulin pump has played a blinder in letting me do what I needed to do without spending much time thinking about diabetes. Note 1 ..read more

Many of you may already be aware that I’m in the process of getting an insulin pump upgrade-my fourth. My pump journey was slow to start but once I was on this path I struggled with access to the latest technology - here in Ireland we have to push hard for access to advancements in technology. In this post, I’m reflecting on why I decided to try an insulin pump to begin with. I did a similar post titled Why I decided to go on an Insulin Pump? in March 2011, when I had been using one for less than a year where I also talk about the process I went through to get my pump because, at the time, I a ..read more

Last December, our family travelled to the United States to spend Christmas with the in-laws in a holiday resort. Covid came too; both teenagers fell victim, and we ended up stranded for an extra few days. It was an incredibly stressful time filled with trying to rebook flights, accommodation, rental car, trying to find antigen tests as well as places that did PCR testing (answer not that many as it turns out in South Carolina), while trying to keep stocked up on paracetamol, throat lozenges and tissues.    Now that we are fully in the Summer holiday season and everyone except m ..read more

I generally don’t have many hypos since a) I started using a glucose sensor and b) looping (DIY APS) but one Saturday last summer, I had a Mother-of-All hypo experience which shook me up quite a bit. However, I do want to assure family and friends reading this that I wasn’t in any real danger and that I am now completely fine.  ** This happened in Summer 2021-I’m completely fine now!!! In the middle of Saturday afternoon, I realised I had to go out to the grocery store to get a few “messages” that had been forgotten in the earlier “big food shop”. So I grabbed my car keys, and my purse ..read more

My current workplace is great for trying new things to be healthier, and most of all our staff canteen chef. When I started at my temporary job I was delighted that the staff canteen was serving in-house homemade baked goods. I’m partial to a wholemeal scone and these ones were modest in size so reduced guilt for extra calorie intake and less impact on glucose levels. However, it did take me about a month to tweak my insulin dosing to accommodate my new working life routine as well as the “foreign” food intake. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my weekly brown scone treat didn’t have ..read more

Last weekend, I attended my first in-person blogger conference since the end of 2019. It was exciting, and in many ways, just what I needed! I travelled not too far to London to the YpsoPump Mylife Diabetes care Blogger Event. It was an intimate gathering of nine bloggers, podcasters, Tic Tock’ers and Instagrammers, and included some new faces and some faces I knew well online. I finally got to meet Kamil who is Nerdabetic on YouTube, Type1Dan Newman and Beth and Ellen the @DiabeticDuo from Belfast, who you might remember from all over the news with their Tic Tok videos of getting ready to go ..read more

On April 25th, the Midwest Diabetes Advocacy Group gave a presentation updating our Clare and Limerick diabetes communities on how much progress has been made campaigning for improved diabetes services in Limerick, Ennis and Nenagh. The Midwest Advocacy Diabetes group is made up of myself, Erin Dolan, Jill Franz, from Clare, and Jean Langford, Ashling O’Kelly and Aisling White, from Limerick. We all have diabetes, we all are part of our local support groups and we all wanted to do something to improve our local diabetes services. Here’s a summary of what we presented at the meeting and we hope ..read more

This month (April) marks four years since the launch of the HSE’s Freestyle Libre Reimbursement Scheme. I’ve published posts on this issue previously including this one which came about when an elected representative reached out to me online and we began messaging back and forth, discussing access to the Freestyle Libre and how we could do something to fix it or that might help.  In February 2021, I suggested that we find out how many people were using all the different sensors and they submitted Parliamentary Questions PQ to that effect. In February 2022, I requested asked another electe ..read more