Step right this way for some diabetes snapshots, information, and inspiration.

URGENT REQUEST TO PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA FROM INSULIN FOR LIFE 

Insulin for Life Australia is in urgent need of Lantus insulin. If you have any no longer needed Lantus (or any other insulin, but Lantus is the priority right now), please consider sending it to Insulin for Life, Australia. More information available here. (If you are not in Australia, please use the same link and request information about where you may be able to send your donated insulin.)

Women’s work

International Women’s Day may have been a couple of weeks ago, but I loved this piece from the Diabetes Mine team paying tribute to women in diabetes.

Researching DIYPS

While we’re talking women in diabetes, this wonderful profile of Dana Lewis showcases not only her trailblazing work in DIYPS, but also how she has moved into researching the technology.

Diabetes devices overview

KQED Science ran this great overview of diabetes devices, including a well-balanced summary of current sensor-based glucose monitors. The piece features another legendary woman in diabetes, Melissa Lee.

Diabetes UK Conference wrap up

Last week, Diabetes UK held their diabetes professional conference in London. They extended the conference by as day to host the Diabetes UK Insider event for people with diabetes which provided a summary of some of the sessions from earlier in the week. (You can catch up on twitter by checking out #DUKPC and #DUKPCInsider tags.)

There was some stellar tweeting from both events from a few twitter stars and the blog posts are trickling through now.

You can read this one from Ros at Type 1 Adventures.

And Ascensia smartly engaged Grumpy Pumper once again to write updates for them, and you can find them here.

Four years

Kim Hislop is a pretty cool woman and recently she wrote a beautiful piece about the last sixth months, which she says have been some of the most difficult times of her life. Four years ago, Kim received a kidney transplant from her mother-in-law and, unfortunately, in September last year, the transplanted kidney was rejected.

Read Kim’s story, including how she is feeling about starting dialysis and what she hopes for her future. She is a truly wonderful person and has been such a wonderful advocate for sharing stories about living with diabetes complications. I really hope she keeps writing.

Please, if you are not already an organ donor, please consider becoming one. Information about becoming an organ and tissue donor in Australia is available here.

Pre-pregnancy planning study

Are you a woman with either type 1 or 2 diabetes aged between 18 and 40 years of age living in Australia? Then Helen Edwards wants to hear from you!

As part of her PhD research, Helen is developing a tool to determine how prepared women with diabetes are for pregnancy. The idea is for the tool to be used by diabetes HCPs working with women with diabetes contemplating pregnancy.

If you are interested in participating, please get in touch with Helen at helen.edwards@adelaide.edu.au.

Just Talking

Last month, I sat down with Christopher Snider and had a chat for his Just Talking podcast. By ‘sit down’, I mean that I was at home in Australia and it was the weekend and I was drinking coffee because it was crazy early, and he was at home in the US and it was … well, who knows when it was – I’m not got at time zones.

We chatted about weird accents (I think we were referring to mine), the Hemsworths and Nicole Kidman, #LanguageMatters (because it does) and other diabetes stuff too.

You can listen to it here.

#GBDOC

I’ve been given the keys to the GBDOC tweetchat bus for this week. I’m talking about including people with diabetes in … well … everything to do with diabetes. I suspect the #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs hashtag might get a bit of a run alongside the #GBDOC tag. Please join me at (UK time) Wednesday at 9pm (which is Thursday at 8am AEDT, because we are the future).

Aims for the chat: don’t use too much Australian slang; limit swearing. I should be right about not using slang…

Spare a Rose wrap up

In case you missed it, the final tally for this year’s Spare a Rose, Save a Child campaign is in!

Thanks to everyone who donated and shared information about the campaign.