Category Archive

It’s Saturday and it’s freezing in Melbourne. The temperature is meant to be sitting around 13 degrees celsius, but the windchill makes it seem more like 8 – which in my mind means it’s 8 freaking degrees! We went to a local cafe this morning after taking the kiddo to her swimming lesson and every time the door opened we nearly cried! It’s that bone-chilling, all encompassing windchill that manages to penetrate however many layers you have used to cover yourself.

Home is the best place to be on a day like this. Central heating cranked, shoes off and knitted socks on. The couch is piled with quilts to keep us warm if we decide to park in front of the TV for an hour or snuggle up with a good book. I’ve been baking chocolate cakes – one for us and one for Aaron to take tonight to share with the band in the school musical. The house smells beautiful.

And in the background, Aaron is composing a beautiful new piece on our daughter’s new piano and it perfectly completes the setting. Everything feels like it should feel on a day like this – warm, cosy and toasty. We know the cold wind is outside – we can hear it pound against our roof and rustle the branches on bare trees.  It’s where it should be. Outside and not the only thing we can focus on as it would if we were amongst it blowing against our cheeks, making our noses and eyes run and chilling us to the bone.

The times when I am content is when diabetes is in the best place it could be. I look after it, I attend to it when necessary and I never forget it’s there. It is what it should be – part of me but not all of me and certainly not a part of me that I ignore.

This Saturday, the cold wind and diabetes are being kept in there place. Just how I like it.

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