A few months ago, I was sat in a paediatric network meeting where we were listening to a fantastic DSN talking passionately about the transitional clinic and support her service offers to YPWD. The scope and range of the discussions were vast and the overwhelming sense of a desire to support all the children and young people living with diabetes that every person in the room held was palpable. One discussion in particular left me pondering. The discussion was around safety. Keeping children and young people safe when supporting a wide range of management regimes. This in turn led me to think a ..read more

In our house, there are certain items we don’t give houseroom to. I have never been one to pour over glossy magazines – as the great Baz Luhrmann told me in my teenage years “Never read fashion magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.” I think he made an excellent point. Women in particular are constantly bombarded with images about how we should dress, wear our hair, wax our eyebrows, wax away any other hair that isn’t on our head (here I have directed the older girls in the house to the excellent Caitlin Moran’s musings on “How to be a Woman” who eloquently highlights the inequity & ..read more

A few months ago, a milestone in my life passed, unnoticed by everyone but me. It is one that colours all aspects of my life and the most important role I hold. I am now not just a motherless mother, I have graduated into “blind mothering”. By blind, I am referring to the fact that all my daughters have now passed the age I was when my mother died. Happily, they’ve all been able to keep hold of a mother more successfully than I, although they are somewhat shortchanged when it comes to my maternal capabilities. Parenting with no reference point is unsettling. Even if one’s childhood experiences ..read more

Things I didn’t know about life with T1D 15 years ago: That a baby could develop T1 diabetes. That my baby could be so poorly it wasn’t clear whether she would come back from hospital to the home she had been born in. That my baby would grow into a toddler with clouds of curly hair. That I possessed the ability to absorb far more important information than I ever thought I could. That I would never, ever pause or flinch, not even once, when mixing and injecting her twice daily insulin injections. (This I attribute to the fact that I carried a baby into hospital who was very close to death. It ..read more

theunderstudypancreas As we approach St Valentine’s Day, I am hoping for an empty vase. I shall be giving my husband an empty vase too. Because we two are so, so lucky. So lucky that when our baby was diagnosed with T1D, we never needed to fear not being able to afford the insulin that is her elixir of life. Just because we were born in a country that provides free & equitable health care for all. Other Mummies & Daddies are not this lucky. The chance of their birth & that of their child’s means the cost of insulin is far out of their reach. And as insulin isn’t an optional cho ..read more

Since starting on her Tandem t:slim X2, Pumplette has lived a very eventful life, taking entrance examinations for a new school the day after her switch, changing schools, adjusting to a new & very busy schedule, which sees longer days at school and lots more work to do too, and finding time to keep up with the important business of being a busy teen. Any of these elements can prove to be a little more challenging when T1D is thrown into the mix, even more so if the equipment you use to manage this changes and adds yet another “unknown” into the pot. Which is why the change to t:slim has b ..read more

Way back in February, when the days were short and the nights long, Pumplette, her sisters and I travelled to Vienna, so that I could attend the ATTD conference. The girls had a great time, exploring Vienna and eating their own body weight in waffles. However, by far the biggest highlight for Pumplette was the opportunity to meet the man from Tandem. Very early one morning, Pumplette learnt the merit of early starts and breakfast meetings, as we headed across the city to meet up with her very good Grumpy friend for their first T:slim encounter. Grumpy & Pumplette & their first Tandem t ..read more

A few weeks ago, I was sat in a meeting room in the House of Commons for the All Party Parliamentary Group Diabetes meeting. This meeting was focused on assessing the uptake & efficacy of Libre (a flash glucose sensor device) that became available on NHS tariff 6 months ago. There was a panel of four who presented around this issue, one voice who uses the Libre & has a child who uses it too, & three consultant voices, all hailing form different parts of the U.K. As always, the perspective of the person living with Diabetes was powerful, as was her testimony of how beneficial this t ..read more

In an earlier life, I spent a few years working as a children’s nanny. I considered it a huge privilege to be invited into people’s families, to be entrusted with the care and nurture of their children, and to be treated with respect as, effectively, a third parent in their family dynamic. The responsibility was one I never took lightly. I loved every child I was tasked to care for fiercely. At the time, I always assumed I couldn’t have loved my own children more, or invested more care and time in my own children as I did with my charges. I can now confidently say, post three children, that wa ..read more

This week, in the UK, is Diabetes Awareness Week. JDRF are running a campaign around #LanguageMatters and Diabetes UK are running one entitled #TalkAboutDiabetes. It has been a very long time since I have posted on the blog – the reasons are complicated and wrapped up in all sorts of layers, but this week, for the first time in what feels like forever, I have wanted to get on my keyboard and highlight the importance of these two campaigns. Pumplette is about to turn 15. Her birthday nearly always falls during Diabetes Awareness Week, and at the start of this week, I was reminded just what an ..read more