Thanks from Insulin for Life

Thriveabetes 2016 facilitated a collection of unneeded, unused diabetes supplies and insulin to send to Insulin for Life/InDependent Diabetes Trust. This was all organised by a member of the Diabetes Community and mother of a child with type 1 diabetes, Sarah MacCann from Dublin. There was an amazing response! I'll let Sarah tell you all about it.

Thank You from Insulin for Life and Sarah MacCann.

It's taken a little while but I've finally sorted through and sent off all the spare insulin and diabetes supplies so generously donated by delegates at this years’ Thriveabetes conference. And what a result! - 10 vials of insulin, 21 pre-fill cartridges and 31 pre-filled insulin pens - 30+ packets of 10 insulin syringes - 8 full boxes of insulin pen needles - 8 full boxes of lancets - 15+ full boxes/containers of glucose test strips - 12 blood glucose monitors - As well as lancing devices, i-ports, sterile wipes, insulin pens and more.

All new, all unused, all going to save lives and enable people living with diabetes in the developing world to thrive in their own communities.

In all, five boxes were sent off to the InDependent Diabetes Trust, who are Insulin for Life's local partner in the UK. We don't yet have a local partner here in Ireland, but we are working on it. IDDT will send all the donated supplies to local projects in the developing world. Last year alone, they sent 110 parcels of donated supplies including £32,000 worth of in-date insulin to diabetes clinics in Africa. You can read more about it here.

So I just wanted to say thank you so much for bringing along all your unwanted supplies for such a great cause. And thanks for coming to talk to us at our little stand in the exhibitor’s area. It's great to get a chance to spread the word that we can do something really positive with our unwanted diabetes supplies.

You can send your unwanted supplies directly to the IDDT all year round, at: Insulin for Life InDependent Diabetes Trust PO Box 294 Northampton NN1 4XS U.K.

They accept: - Unopened, in-date insulin with at least 3 months until expiry date - Unused insulin pens - Unopened packs of syringes & pen needles - Unused lancets and unopened lancing devices - Unopened glucose test strips - Unused blood glucose monitors

Make sure everything you send is unused and in-date, ideally in its original packaging. And don't forget to say that you heard about them at Thriveabetes!

Thanks again for all your support again and looking forward to meeting you again next year.

Sarah email: i4eireland@gmail.com

Thriveabetes 2016 Summary

Well another Thriveabetes is done and dusted ☹️ And while our attendees are filling out our survey forms giving us priceless feedback, I thought a little summary was in order from my perspective. By the way the survey forms were emailed to attendees through Eventbrite, check your inboxes, and maybe even your junk folder, this feedback is really important to us as it helps us focus on providing what you feel is most important. Firstly, I would like to thank ALL of the organising team - and despite what they tell you, it is a team effort. And secondly, I would like to thank the Diabetes online Community for their neverending support and encouragement.

Thriveabetes 2016 was 50% larger than 2015, with 248 individuals attending;

- 62 children aged 5 to 16 years

- Approximately 70 adults living with type 1 diabetes and

- Approximately 90 parents of children with type 1 diabetes.

We had 45 people on a waiting list and it never seemed to get shorter! Most of whom were looking for more than one ticket to Thriveabetes. This demonstrates a clear demand for this type of event which ensures it's future for at least another year.

From my perspective, I feel like it achieved what we set out to achieve; to provide information, motivation and inspiration to all living with type 1 diabetes. There were a couple of things we tried as experiments, which mostly worked but it did provide us with information on how to make it better.

But also in our primary objective to provide emotional and mental support to all the adults (both parents of children with type 1 diabetes and to adults with type 1). Why? Well, because most of the medical information on living with type 1 diabetes is available from your diabetes clinic, from attending diabetes information conferences and from the internet. But diabetes doesn't read textbooks (thanks Liz Warren on Twitter for that quote -it's priceless) and everyone's diabetes is particular to them, this is what makes Thriveabetes different from other diabetes conferences.

And because, Parents of children with type 1 diabetes, how often does anyone ask YOU how you are doing? I bet people ask about your child plenty, even about their diabetes! But not about how you are doing!

Adults with type 1 diabetes, are you ever asked how you're coping with this life long chronic illness? I bet not often. But I'm sure people ask how your diabetes is doing.

Thriveabetes is first and foremost a support event for adults. Everything else, such as the children's programmes to allow more parents attend, is a bonus. We do have plans to repeat Thriveabetes, we are just not sure if we can pull it off in 12 months or 18. But our blog is here to stay. And if you would like to share stories with us on the blog we'd love to hear from you. Because you ALL have stories to tell.

Looking to the Future of Thriveabetes.

In the coming weeks we will upload all the photos taken at Thriveabetes and our conference booklet. The Thriveabetes organisation team will have a debriefing session on how we move to plan the next Thriveabetes and how to overcome the financial challenges we faced this year. As always you can keep up to date with our planning progress through subscribing to our email newsletter or through our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Thriveabetes Guest Post Gavin Griffiths The DiAthlete

This week's post is a bit late but better than never:-) It comes from Thriveabetes Guest speaker, Gavin Griffiths, AKA The DiAthlete. It was meant to be posted before Thriveabetes but that didn't happen, for some reason?!?  Gavin presented "Going the Distance" to multiple groups at Thriveabetes and talked about his life with type 1 diabetes, what inspired him to take on 30 marathons in 30 days around the UK and how he works to bring awareness to the lack of access to basic diabetes care or even insulin in developing countries around the world. Here is some of Gavin's story.

Gavin's Story;

I am very much looking forward to being over in Ireland for this year’s Thriveabetes Conference and meeting everybody there! It is a fantastic initiative to reach, encourage and support people living with, and families affected by, type 1 diabetes in the country with such an event; my full praise goes to Grainne, Rebecca, Christine and all the organisers / volunteers who are making this happen! Personally my type 1 diabetes journey started with the new Millennium, in January 2000, following a difficult Christmas period in the suburbs of London, where I had missed a lot of school before the holidays as an 8-year-old boy. The symptoms from the ‘Millennium bug’ flu virus began to alter into a dreadful need to urinate very frequently, met by an equally overwhelming quench of thirst seemingly every minute! And my guesses are, all reading this know exactly what that meant…

There has often been a squabble as to whether we should say “diabetic” or whether we should be called “people with diabetes,” perhaps you have your own preference; I tend to go by the name of ‘The DiAthlete’ because I believe, as crazy as it may sound, that in living with this condition and all the daily responsibilities it brings, we are actually much finer human-beings as a result – regardless of the slightly faulty pancreas we have. There is that famous quote in Marvel’s The Amazing Spiderman: ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’ From my experiences of nearly 17 years living with type 1 diabetes, I would tweak that statement a wee bit: “With great responsibility -- comes great power.” #TeamDiAthlete!

To date I am still on the journey, perhaps not the finished article; who is? We are all on this diabetes journey whether you have lived 1 month with type 1 diabetes or whether you have lived 100 years with it (like Joe Solowiejczyk!) – there is always more to learn. By coming to a conference like this it is a positive step forwards, not only in taking the tips and motivation from the likes of Gary Scheiner, Anna Clarke, Joe and myself, but in the people you’ll meet also attending the conference, who you’ll find you’ll have so much in common with. I see the people living with diabetes around the world as one big global family – and I have been fortunate on my adventures to have met many living with type 1 and also type 2 diabetes from all corners of the globe. It doesn’t matter what colour skin you have, it doesn’t matter what religion you believe in, it doesn’t matter what your fashion sense is; what matters is we all bleed the same colour blood and in living with type 1 diabetes we all just click and relate, as we each have to understand the glucose levels inside that mentioned blood!

Most of my accomplishments to date fall under a category of ultra-endurance-madness, with such challenges as the GBR 30/30 Challenge: running 30 mile routes every day for 30 days from John O’Groats to Land’s End in the UK; the Manhattan Marathons: running 7 marathons in 7 days around Long Island, NY, for the type 1 charity Marjorie’s Fund; the mHealth Grand Tour: cycling 1500km in 9 days from Brussels to Geneva, including pedalling over a few Alp mountains; most recently the World Diabetes Tour T1D Challenge, which was a much calmer 100km hike around an active volcanic mountain called Hekla in Iceland…

Whilst I have a range of adventures to share with you at the conference, the key point is that I grew up with type 1 diabetes, wondered what this condition actually was, hated it for much of my childhood and in some regards learned my lessons the hard way. I’m not super-human, but if there is a part of me which is, well, it stems from having the right attitude when it comes to living with type 1 diabetes.

See you soon, Ireland! Gavin Griffiths www.facebook.com/diathlete - www.twitter.com/diathlete - Insta: The DiAthlete – diathlete.org