Category Archive

Chocolate kisses. Is there a better way to treat a low?

Hoping.
My husband and daughter’s hands.

Details of Write HOPE on Your Hands for Diabetes Awareness can be found here.

It’s always great when the diabetes online community gets a shout out in the media. So I was delighted to see this edition of Diabetic Living magazine which has a five-page spread on Australian bloggers and social media folk.

This article follows the hugely successful inaugural Australian Diabetes Social Media Summit held in Melbourne on WDD last November. Diabetes Living sent along a staff member and it was terrific that the magazine decided to write about some of the attendees.

So, get yourself down to your local newsagent, buy a copy and have a read about some amazing folk like Matt Cameron (and then read his blog!), Ashley Ng (and read hers too!) and Brent Salzmann (who you should then follow on Twitter).  I’m pretty honoured to have been profiled among this incredible and dynamic bunch.

And if you’ve been thinking that you’d like to give this blogging caper a go, or get on Twitter, there are some useful tips to get you started.

Over the next couple of days, I am spending some time at the University of Melbourne talking with first year medicine students. It is their first week enrolled in this course and during this time, their focus is strongly patient perspectives.

One activity involves listening to a panel of people living with various chronic health conditions. We’re the ones they prepared earlier. And we’re the ones that are going to be an absolute nightmare for them when they finally become grown-up doctors. Why? Well, we’re selected because we are, what some cynically refer to, as professional patients. It’s a badge I’m willing to wear with pride, because knowing about my health condition doesn’t make me a pain in the arse. It makes me empowered.

As preparation for these sessions, we’re asked to think about stories of the good and bad experiences we’ve had with health professionals. We talk about what good communication looks and sounds like and really focus on the health professionals we love dealing with and why. I’m lucky, because I have mostly good stories to tell. I don’t like doctor (or nurse) bashing, so being able to praise the good ones is terrific!

There is no such thing as a poster child for a health condition, so I am always very clear when talking about my experiences with diabetes that I state (several hundred times) that I speak for me and me alone; for my diabetes and my diabetes alone. But even with that caveat, sharing my story provides these students with an inkling of what daily life with diabetes and our interactions with our health professionals is all about.

Sessions like these are really important because they get to hear about living with a chronic condition, but not in a clinic setting where there is noise, people interrupting and one eye constantly on the clock knowing that there are a herd more people outside to get through. They get to ask questions about how we felt about certain situations and why communicating effectively and listening attentively is important. And they get to see us as people, not as a health condition.

This is the third or fourth year I have done this. I feel privileged to be able to tell my story and I hope that at some point in their doctoring lives, the stories shared by the members of the panel will resonate. That as they walk in to see their 25th patient for the day, they remember to breathe, and ask questions that allow the patient to share important information. And that they listen.

When it comes to health care the patient perspective is the most important. How we interpret our appointments and the information we’re given, what we do afterwards and how we feel about living with our condition reflects how we manage our condition. I really applaud the University of Melbourne for including this program in the first week of studies for the med students. Now if only they could find time in the frantic timetable to do it each and every year of their studies.

On those days when diabetes plays nice:

and I see things that make me happy:

and deliveries to work come in multi-coloured hues with beautiful notes from loved ones:

and little girls get to stare out to sea:

I smile.  Especially when the soundtrack to life is Dr John.

Back at work today and I was greeted by this.

Yes, in a moment of madness at the end of last year, I thought it a good idea to buy myself a 2013 calendar featuring a daily cupcake recipe. With accompanying photo.

So although the Chinese calendar tells me that this is the Year of the Snake and the United Nations has announced 2013 as the International year of Water Cooperation and also the International Year of Quinoa, the little calendar sitting on my desk tells me that this is, in fact, the year of the cupcake.

Totally bolus-worthy. And yes – I can eat that!

Cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery NYC
January 2012

I missed writing for Sib of a D-Kid Day a couple of weeks ago.  Also, given that I was diagnosed as an adult, I don’t think that I really fit the profile of why the day was conceived. But having an adult sibling diagnosed with a life-long health condition and fitting that into the family dynamic does invite some discussion, I think. How does one sibling suddenly being told they have diabetes impact on other kids, albeit grown up kids, in a family?

I have one sister, Tonya. She’s a couple of years younger than me and is possibly the smartest person I’ve ever known. She’s gorgeous, sassy and caring. She also has a sense of humour on her that can have me in stiches for hours at a time. And, you don’t want to be on the receiving side of her wit – it’s scathing!

She thinks I am extraordinarily bossy (‘Try this on’, ‘Buy that’) and I think she is too. We are very different, but also very much the same about things. I pity any fool who gets on her wrong side.

Even though I am older, Tonya has a feeling of protectiveness about me that is especially prominent when she feels someone has done something to hurt me. And when it comes to me having diabetes.

Lucky for her, she has managed to avoid the dodgy autoimmune issues that plague our mum and me. This makes me feel incredibly glad and like I want to pinch her. Which I wouldn’t do, because I’m a little scared of her at times.

And I think that at times, she may be a little scared of the fact that I have diabetes. She’s never said that to me, but it’s just a general feeling I have.

One night we were having dinner at Marios – a favourite haunt – when I made some throw away comment about her living longer than me because diabetes would shorten my life by 15 years. That was very much the thinking at the time and my comment wasn’t meant to harm in any way. ‘Don’t say that’, she said with a slightly raised voice and her eyes started to fill with tears.

When I have been going through a difficult time of living with diabetes she is incredible. She rallies the troops, puts on her bossy boots and calls me to say things like ‘Right, so I’ve organised dad to sit with the kidlet if Aaron is at a gig so you and I can go for a walk three times a week. OK?’ or ‘I think you need to see your endo. Can you make an appointment tomorrow?’ This is followed up with daily phone calls, text messages, emails, sky-writing messages asking if I have, in fact, made that appointment. If this came from anyone else, I’d want to kill them. But from Tonya, whilst at times annoying, I know it is because this is her way of doing something for me and my diabetes. She may not be able to say ‘I know what you’re going through’, but her actions say ‘I’m here to help’.

She has had to deal with parents who now consider their daughters different to each other in some ways. She knows that they too fear how diabetes will play out in my life and she knows that there have been times that I have really needed them which has meant they probably weren’t there as much for her.

What she really thinks about having a sister, her only sibling, with diabetes is a mystery to me – we’ve never discussed it. But her support and encouragement and bossy ways tell me that she cares. I don’t think there is anything more that I could wish for.