Our year in review

December 18, 2017 Grainne Flynn

We are winding down the Thriveabetes planning for 2017 and taking a well earned break for the holidays. This is always a good point to say "Thank You" for the outpouring of support we have received in planning an event like Thriveabetes and how grateful we are for all of that support. Thriveabetes would not happen if our community did not support it - thank you so much for every "like", comment, share, click and subscription. If you are new to Thriveabetes or new to the diabetes "club" I've put together a mini review of our 2017.

Here are some of our 2017 highlights for us.

October

As 2017 began, we launched into planning our next major Thriveabetes event at a level that was sustainable by our team of volunteers. In October, we opened registration to Thriveabetes 2018 which takes place on Saturday 24th February in The Red Cow Hotel, Dublin. As of this morning, we have 135 people registered with children's’ places filling up fast.

Advanced booking is required to attend. We do urge people to register early as last year we completely sold out two weeks before and had a huge waiting list that we couldn't accommodate.

People can register on our website here.

Our event focuses on the everyday challenges of living with type 1 diabetes and we have speakers from the US, UK and from all over Ireland. Learn more about our speakers here.

August

The Kavanagh Family in Naas pulled out all the stops to help us raise the funds we needed to make sure that the cost of an event like Thriveabetes 2018 is completely covered. They organised a concert with some amazing artists including Luka Bloom.

May

We were very fortunate to have Dr. Stephen Ponder, author of “Sugar Surfing” visit Ireland and ask us to organise a workshop on this method of managing glucose levels in the real world. Here’s is my review of what I learned at it.

Guest Posts from the Diabetes Community

We love it when members of the community send us their stories to share and we hope to continue to share stories from the diabetes community in 2018. Here's a collections of those stories:

Managing Type 1 Diabetes in College by Emma Wright, pwd
Finding Diabetes Support by Davina Lyon, pwd
Taking Diabetes to Mount Kilimanjaro by Michael Murphy, pwd
Diabetes on The Four Peaks of Ireland by Kieran Flanagan, pwd
Nightscout Diabetes Management by Susan McGrath, D-Mum
It's not JUST my Diabetes by Eimear Downey, pwd
Diabetes OFFline support is Important too by Pam Kavanagh, D-Mum
Bright Spots and Landmines; Book Review by Niamh Downes, pwd
Run, Rebecca, Run by Rebecca Flanagan, D-Mum
Diabetes Project by the Sunrise Foundation by Matilda Chongwa, founder of the Sunrise Foundation

January 2018

In the new year, fully recharged, it will be all systems go for Thriveabetes 2018: confirming exhibitors and sponsors, spreading the word through the diabetes community and looking forward to an A-MAZING day on Saturday 24th February.

Thank You for your Support

None of this would be possible without our team of volunteers and the huge support we get from the diabetes community. And the main mission of Thriveabetes is to introduce as many people with diabetes as possible to peer support. For each of us finding diabetes peer support is so important to helping us manage our diabetes. I feel these images and quotes from the International Diabetes Federation’s World Diabetes Congress go a long way to explain just how much your support means to us.

“Peer support isn't about asking for help, it’s meeting other people, seeing what & how they do it- and replicate. It's just like babies learn! @grumpy_pumper #IDF2017 #doc #dedoc”

This image taken by Bastian Hauck, @tadorna, created by Manny Hernandez, @AskManny, founder of the Diabetes Hands Foundation is the best illustration I’ve seen on how peer support bridges the gap between people with diabetes and healthcare professionals.

To all of you we give you our deepest thanks and hope that you will continue to give us your feedback to improve Thriveabetes all the time.

Thriveabetes