Do you ever get the sense that somebody is watching you? I had that feeling for a week, except it wasn't a feeling, it was real. If you know me, or if you have read my blog for a little while, you'll know that I suffer with Diabulimia. I don't like the word "suffer", but I do, I suffer through this. I don't feel bad for myself, but it is heavy, and it is serious, and it is not a choice. I find it hard to talk about it, which is why I prefer to write about it, there is something about saying it out loud that makes it too real, and overwhelming.  You can imagine my horror when I had to repe ..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

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

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.  A few weeks ago I was a si ..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

Support. It's the very foundation that the diabetes online community is built on, we're there for each other because we understand each other, we look out for one another. Or so I thought. When I was fourteen years old I opened a laptop and wrote my first blog post, and I posted it. I was a teenager trying to navigate the world at the same time as navigating a chronic condition and writing blog posts was my way of venting, of clearing my head, I didn't expect that people would read my thoughts, but they did and that's why I'm where I am today. That's why the past 10 years of my life with Typ ..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