I went out to dinner with my two best girlfriends last night, to a local Italian BYO. It had been about 12 years since I was last at this particular restaurant. At the end of the meal, I remarked how well they were doing to still be around, and how I always remembered this restaurant fondly.

One of my friends lives in the area, as do her family. It used to be a frequently-visited restaurant for she and the extended family. I asked her if they still go there regularly, and her response was interesting:

“We have recently started coming back here, but we stopped for ages after they were so rude to you about your diabetes”, she said. I…

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Like it or not, as insulin addicts, we are in a bit of a tight spot when it comes to the world markets. As those of us on Cozmo insulin pumps found out last year, market forces can have a profound effect on the availability of products we rely on to keep our diabetes under control.

The most recent example of this has sprung up in the last week, with insulin manufacturing giant Novo Nordisk deciding they won’t cut their prices for the Greek market, resulting in them stopping supply of “modern insulins”. I’ve had a bit of a…

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Happy anniversary to meeeee. Today, I have had type 1 diabetes for 16 years. Exactly half of my life. Woahhhh.

I feel simultaneously old, and fortunate today. I remember when I was 16, thinking I was pretty onto it and sort of grown up, and now I’m DOUBLE that age – crikey! The fortunate bit – I don’t have a single diabetes complication to date (despite doing my best to ignore my diabetes for many years in my late teens and twenties), and I am now fortunate to have a regime which (on the whole) works really well for me and is limited in its invasiveness in my life. I’ve been through many regimes – clear + cloudy from a…

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While I was at work last week lamenting the fact that I had to work instead of still being at the camp with the kids and the sunshine and fun, I got to thinking about how lucky diabetics are these days. I know that this will age me chronically but it’s the truth so I’m gonna say it anyway.

Back in the day (1991 to be exact) we sure as heck didn’t have pumps. Hell, we didn’t even have insulin pens so I was a little shocked I suppose when I saw these young ones all doing what I thought were complicated regimes of testing, boluses etc at the camp fairly independant of their parents and us. That train…

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Ahem – I suppose ‘hands up’ might be a little too close to the bone on this subject. I saw this article a few days ago, and to be honest it didn’t really fill me with joy quite like the announcement about inhalable insulin a few years ago.

Apparently insulin suppositories are an area being explored for young children and older patients, who have trouble with injections. Which I suppose counts me out of the target market entirely. But I have to say – the improvements with diabetes which excite me are the ones which bring my life closer to the everyday person’s, not something which would see me having to run off to…

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