Our Venue is Booked!!!

Yes, our venue is booked! We did a lot of research on trying to find the most accessible location in the whole country. And we did a lot of soul-searching on it.

We were fully focused on finding a location that would work for the most people. We wanted to find a venue that people from outside of the greater Dublin area would travel to without causing too much stress and expense. But we also wanted a venue that people from inside the greater Dublin area would find worth the traffic battle and accessible by public transport.

For those of you who have to travel the furthest distance; if you make the trip, we will promise to make it worth your while!

Myself and Christine drove to view our potential venue last Sunday. It took us 2 1/5 hours from Ennis, Co. Clare with one pit stop. AND we didn't get lost a single time. That's saying something for a couple of culchies!!! Seriously!

We feel, and we hope you do too, that we have found THE closest to perfect venue.

So, without further ado,.....

The Thrive-abetes; Thrive with Type 1 Diabetes Conference will take place on Saturday, 3rd of October 2015 in The Glen Royal Hotel on Straffan Road in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

The Glen Royal is perfectly located just off the M4 at Exit 7 (Maynooth Exit) on the edge of Maynooth town. And when I say just off the M4, it is 2 kilometres from Exit 7.

The Maynooth Train and Bus Station is 350 metres from The Glen Royal. Yes, we checked! Google maps states that this is a four minute walk.

Maynooth is on the:
Dublin - Maynooth/Longford/M3 Parkway Train line
Bus Eireann by the No. 20  buses.
Dublin Bus No 67

* This information may not be completely accurate, it was very difficult to navigate the Irish transport websites to find this information (!?!). Please let me know if I have posted incorrect information. Thanks in Advance.

The Glenroyal Hotel Maynooth includes full leisure centre with 2 pools, Glenroyal Beauty treatment rooms, great bar and restaurant, free parking for guests,  and free wireless internet for delegates.

It is ON!!!
Gráinne.

Thank you Diabetes Community for your support!

The Irish Diabetes Community has been so supportive of this event and we are truly appreciative and thankful for it.

I had lots of queries about Thrive-abetes after last week's post and lots of excitement around the confirmation of Helena Farrell as our third speaker.

So, in an effort to address further queries and make information easier to find I have rearranged some of this blogs pages. Namely on the right hand side of the page a list of pages, including Conference Speakers and a draft of our conference programme.

We are still working on finding our perfect venue with one more to view. But myself & Rebecca are extremely eager to get this item put to bed.

We also have a raffle planned to raise our funding shortfall of €2,500 with a SIGNED 2014 Six Nations Ireland rugby shirt on offer, which was very generously donated by Davina Lyon and John O'Reilly from Diabetes T1 Ireland. Plus, two weekends away to give away kindly donated by Maura Tierney from Friar's Lodge Guest House in Kinsale, Co. Cork (I could actually use one of those right now;-)

Once our raffle license arrives we will announce details on how you can buy raffle tickets and we will also be asking for volunteer ticket sellers. Five hundred tickets seems like a big number but many hands should make light work of it!

Thrive-abetes; has the potential to nourish empowerment!

Why I Need Thrive-abetes to Happen.

by Rebecca Flanagan.

Rebecca on the right, her eldest  daughter now aged 14 on the left.

It was a Friday in February, my husband and I were at a book launch in Dublin, leaving our 2 daughters at my sister-in-law’s in Co. Clare, where we live. When we returned the next day, my sister in law mentioned the symptoms that she knew were associated with Type 1 diabetes. The symptoms that my 7 year old first born was showing – extreme thirst, frequent urination, lethargy. It hit my like a ton of bricks. My father has type 1 for almost 40 years but I never knew the onset symptoms. I was so, so sad and had so much guilt. My poor baby had been telling me she didn't feel good for some time but I couldn't see anything wrong with her. This guilt is still present at times, and that was 7 years ago.

We now have 3 daughters, our eldest is an amazing teenager living with type 1 diabetes. It can be hard at times – knowing that she will live with this condition her entire life. It can be frightening if you allow yourself to think of the complications that can occur. It can be heartbreaking watching all the finger prick tests and injections she has to do, all the constant monitoring, and of course the wishing, as her mother, that I could take it all away and make it better – but I can’t!

What I can do, is try to keep positive for her sake. I need to keep educating myself in order to give her the best there is in managing her disease. I need to encourage her as much as possible so that she is empowered and able to move on from being a child with diabetes and become an adult with diabetes. This also means I need to be able to give her the space to do this – probably the most difficult part for me!

A conference like "Thrive-abetes" has the potential for this empowerment to be nourished. I believe that meeting other parents, and even other adults, with type 1 diabetes is fundamental in understanding this disease and seeing how others cope with some aspects that we may find difficult, and maybe being able to help others with aspects we excel at that they may find challenging. A conference like this can be a huge motivational platform when there is very little other support out there.

The clinic appointments and meetings with nurses and doctors are always very clinical, and there is no psychological support available which specializes in the effects that a chronic illness can have on a child, adolescent or adult – none in our geographical area anyway. "Thrive-abetes" has the opportunity to fill some of this void and I sincerely hope that everyone can get behind us and help us get this off the ground. I know that it will hugely benefit myself and other parents of children with type 1 diabetes.

Thanks Rebecca for sharing your story with us.

If you would like to help make "Thrive-abetes" happen for people with Type 1 Diabetes, please make a €5 donation to our campaign or post the link below in your social media; https://www.icrowdfund.ie/campaigns/thrive-abetes-thrive-with-type-1-diabetes-conference/