World Diabetes Day falls on the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, the man who co-founded insulin, I sometimes think that while World Diabetes Day is a day to raise awareness for both types of diabetes, it often gets clouded by everyone just talking about Type 2 Diabetes and how we can "eat more fruit and veg and be healthy!" However, World Diabetes Day exists as a day to celebrate the birthday of a man who is the reason that people with Type One Diabetes are able to live their lives, so really, not to be cheeky, but, Type One should get a bit more attention than it does. Seeing as we do rely ..read more

I've been living with Type One Diabetes since I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed at the end of Year 7. Not only did I have to adjust to a new school, but I had to adjust to a whole new way of life, honestly, I've had 7 and a half years to "adjust" and sometimes I think I'm still not quite there yet. I don't know if you can ever truly fully adjust to a life with Type One, it's unpredictable and no two days are the same, you could have perfect blood sugars after eating pizza one day, then you'll get completely different results another day, it never fails to surprise you or lure you into a fals ..read more

80,000. 80,000 people have, at one time or another read my blog, that's a hell of a lot of people. I'm doing my best to get back into blogging properly again. My blog is over 3 years old, but in the 3 years that I've had it, it has had a massive impression on my life in terms of advocating for Type 1 Diabetes and everyone else living with it. It's got my name out there in the diabetes online community, it's connected me to so many amazing people, it's inspired others, it's inspired what I want to do as a career, it's opened doors to amazing opportunities like going to and speaking Parliament ..read more

Thursday 28 November saw me sitting in A&E feeling like I was burning on the inside. I'd been feeling unwell in the days prior, and I'd been in A&E on the Sunday with extreme pain in my side that they couldn't find a cause for. All the pain and the stress and all the symptoms of an infection came to a head on that Thursday, my blood sugar shot up and wouldn't budge. With no means of testing my ketones I decided a safe bet would be to go via A&E on my way home from work. I got on the tube, found a seat, and sat down for the 4-stop journey to the hospital, I didn’t feel too horrible ..read more

For the past few months I've been involved in helping an incredible group of people organise ArT1st Live. Art1st was founded in 2019 by Professor Partha Kar, National Specialty Advisor for Diabetes at NHS England, to unite people who have diabetes and showcase their creative talents. When a live event was out of the question in June 2020, ArT1st went online and people submitted their art on social media. These were shared across various social media platforms and gained lots of praise, attention, turned into an online event and reignited the appetite for a live event.  Fast forward t ..read more

This month I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Diabetes UK Professional Conference to talk about my experiences of transitioning to adult clinic and share a platform with Reza Zaidi and Fulya Mehta - two incredible diabetes consultants who do so much wonderful work to improve the lives of those living with diabetes. It was a privilege to speak along side them and contribute to their session on Transitioning to adult services. The conference took place from the 5th - 7th of March in Liverpool. It was a fabulous experience and I'd never been to Liverpool before, so I was very excited to ..read more

I was 11 years old when my immune system killed the beta cells in my pancreas that produce insulin, that control my blood sugar. I took on a job that my body could no longer do for itself - insulin production, blood sugar regulation, a bodily function that most people don't even know about because they don't even have to think about it.  Those tiny cells in my pancreas, destroyed by my own immune system. Once releasing the right amount of insulin for my body, the correct amount needed to regulate my blood sugar - and suddenly I had to do it all myself.  I don't remember much of a lif ..read more

This is a really long post, if you make it to the end, well, I have no prizes to offer you but congratulations. On the 5 June I uploaded a blog post and opened up about my struggles with diabulima. It was hard, hard to write about something so heavy, so personal, and something that barely made sense to me in my own head let alone to other people. I was in a good place when I wrote that post, on the other side of an eating disorder that affects 40% of young adult females with type one diabetes. I spent a lot of the first half of this year trying to lose weight, trying to regain some "control" o ..read more

It's been a while...I haven't written a blog post since October last year - my blog posts have been few and far between for a long time now, so much so that I don't even call myself a blogger anymore, not even sporadic. I can't pin point one specific reason for my stopping, my passion for blogging just gradually faded and along with my fading passion I found myself fading. I found myself not enjoying the things I used to enjoy, I lost my mojo, I lost my spark, I lost myself. I didn't know who I was anymore, I wasn't a blogger anymore, or a diabetes advocate, or bubbly (albeit irritable ha!) a ..read more

Our minds...they make up who we are, how we make all of our decisions, our behaviour, where our thoughts reside, the place we can never leave, even if we want to so badly. I started writing this post a couple of weeks ago during Mental Health Awareness week, but I stopped and I shut down my computer. This isn't something I've ever spoken about publicly before and something I've always struggled to put into words, because it's heavy, and it's confusing and everything that's wrong to those who don't understand. It's backwards, and it's messy but it's my reality. It might feel heavy but I want to ..read more