Thriveabetes 2023 Summary

“Thriveabetes isn’t a conference; it’s a community!” Thriveabetes 2023 attendee.

Thriveabetes 2023 took place on Saturday 6th, May in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Blanchardstown. Over 150 people attended and spread across four programmes tailored to that group's needs.

Naturally, as the event took place in Dublin, most of our attendees came from the county Dublin area; however, in total, 23 counties were represented. There were 95 Adults and Young Adults living with Type 1 Diabetes, 43 parents of children with type 1 diabetes and 7 Adults with type 1 who were also parents of a child or children with Type 1 Diabetes.

The day kicked off with an excited welcome from Thriveabetes co-founder Gráinne Flynn and a show of hands, or rather, wristbands. This is something inspired by the Children with Diabetes organisation’s Friends for Life Conferences as a way to find our tribe.

Our first keynote speaker, Stacey Simms, from Diabetes Connections, set the perfect tone for the day with her presentation, “Diabetes Connections”, and how important they are. The reassurance of seeing healthy adults with type 1 everywhere. She shared that when her two-year-old son was diagnosed, one of the nurses in the hospital who lived with type 1 made it a point to introduce herself with I’m an adult, and I made it as a way to reassure newly diagnosed families that it was going to be ok.

From that point onwards, the day was filled with connections, and I loved hearing those stories afterwards from our attendees. I especially loved the story about the newly diagnosed chap who confessed to another attendee that he was so nervous about attending, but from the minute he arrived, he felt completely comfortable, so much so that he made sure others were not sitting by themselves. And the story of the lady outside the venue who seemed reluctant to leave because she came to a diabetes conference but found a community. The story of the two ladies who knew each other to see in their local areas but had no idea that they were both parents of children with diabetes. Other comments we’ve received were that the visibility of diabetes technology and the endless alarms going off everywhere normalised diabetes for people, and there was no judgement of how we do diabetes anywhere.

After Stacey’s presentation, we divided into smaller groups where we could really build on those connections. There we combined multiple round table discussions on specific topics such as exercise, women’s health issues, diabetes in school, to pump or not to pump, navigating the leaving cert, moving from the children's services to adult diabetes services, and asking anything anonymously for the young type 1s.

We ended the day with an energetic presentation on diabetes technology (smart pens, pumps, CGMs and apps) from Kamil Armacky, from the Nerdabetic Channel on YouTube, who rounded off his talk with a fun diabetes-themed quiz that we all won.

Here is a small sample of photos from the day, most of which have been provided by DPRM Photography.