Diabetes Support

Diabetes Day in the Dail

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Diabetes Day At the DailOn Wednesday 22 June in Leinster House, Diabetes Ireland is briefing TDs and Senators on current diabetes services and what future services are required to support the diabetes community nationally in the coming years. Myself, Rebecca Flanagan, Davina Lyon & Elizabeth Murphy have been invited to attend this event with both Rebecca, a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes, & Davina, an adult with type 1 diabetes, making personal statements. Next week I hope to fill you all in on how it went.

If you are reading this post early on the 21st and have a couple of minutes we would very much appreciated it if you would email your local TDs and ask them to represent you or your family member at this briefing. You can find email addresses for all of them here; Who is my TD?

Speakers will include Dr Nuala Murphy, Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist and National Clinical Lead in Paediatric Diabetes, Dr Ronan Canavan, Consultant Endocrinologist, National Clinical Lead in Adult Diabetes and our four patient representatives.

 

On a completely different note - We want to hear your stories!

Over a number of months we have been featuring your diabetes stories. And you have all been fantastic! We would love to hear from more of you. Are you a diabetes veteran but new to the Irish Diabetes Online Community? Have you raised a child with diabetes who is now an adult? Are you a young adult still getting use to doing it without your parents? Basically, if you have something you want to say or a story to tell - we want to hear it.

This is the list of people we have featured over the last couple of years;

Email me at Grainne@thriveabetes.ie

Speaker Spotlight - Joe Solo

Joe Solowiejczyk spoke at Thriveabetes in 2015 and was a huge hit! And I have been under strict instructions to make sure that he was speaking again at Thriveabetes 2016, which he is. Phew! I don't have to go into hiding.
For those of you who are yet to become familiar with Joe, he has lived with type 1 diabetes for 50+ years. But he is also a registered nurse, certified diabetes educator and family therapist.

Joe works extensively with both patients and professionals on the Family-Approach to Diabetes Management. He works with paediatric patients and their families to help them cope with their child’s diagnosis and daily challenge of living with diabetes. He designs educational and counselling programs for both children and adults with diabetes.

His ebook “A Type 1 Guide to the Universe”  introduces a new way to learn to thrive with diabetes. It is the first book to integrate the psychological and emotional aspects of dealing with diabetes into the core of its approach.

 Joe is scheduled to co-present with our parent advocate from the UK, Penny Robinson on how to advocate for your child with diabetes.

Welcome to Type 1 posted this video of one of Joe's presentations so you can see for yourself what you will experience at Thriveabetes 2016.

Register for Thriveabetes

Thriveabetes 2016 takes place on Saturday 1st October in Naas, Co. Kildare. Registration is open now and you can read more about our speakers here.