And welcome back everybody hope you've had your little lunch, we should have
done something here - just seen pictures of everybody's lunches for the fun of it - but hey
listen it's virtual you know, sometimes someday we'll all get again together
and we can all peer at each other's lunch and see what everybody's happening.
Now we've heard plenty from our younger side of the community,
some fantastic stories what's going on, but i think one of the biggest challenges is that often
type 1 diabetes is seen as a young person's condition - the fact of the matter is due to
better diagnosis, better recognition, better care, people live longer and people are diagnosed better
so you've got a significant percent of the population which is actually in the much
older group and I think it's important we recognize that that we don't just see this
young person's disease and we need to sort of look into what we want to go through and our
next speaker is the lovely Pat. Pat is 67 if I may be right on that one so I'm going to leave
Pat to give her views, but a very important perspective of where we sit, where we are and
also remembering type one diabetes is a broad condition affecting all ages over to you Pat.
Hello i'm Pat and I'm here to tell you my story as someone who was diagnosed type 1 later in life
and the difference a range of diabetes tech has made to me and my life with diabetes.
I was leading a busy active life, I was a counselor and was out and about in the
community and had loads of different meetings I was suddenly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes
at 67 years age while I was on holiday in Spain well, it was a bombshell and hit me like a
sledgehammer. I was very upset about it and felt like it was the end of the world as I knew it,
I lost my confidence in who I was - the words on this slide reflect how my head seemed,
all over the place there was so much to deal with especially as being in Spain in the hospital
where the nurses had very little English and me virtually no Spanish,
it was hard being taught how to give myself injections
and checking my blood sugar through finger pricks - how could I hope to cope with it all?
I came home and was referred to the diabetes clinic in my local hospital in Saint Helens.
I got wonderful support and education from the diabetes team some of whom are in the photo - they
helped and supported me from day one and showed me how to start, to carry on with my life.
They provided information about diabetes from videos, leaflets and courses
to help me understand more about my diabetes and increase my confidence in how to manage it
-starting with finger pricks and multiple daily injections.
Then came the face-to-face education like carb-counting, sick days information
and the various courses designed to help me cope with diabetes. It also helped meeting
other people in the same situation and I started to regain my confidence then I started to look
online and speaking to people to see what else was out there to help me cope with my diabetes.
Now I'm not advertising any particular apps, more like highlighting that there are digital apps
that can help make living with diabetes easier and are worth exploring.
Ones I've personally found useful are carbs and cals - this can be downloaded onto your
phone so you don't have to carry a book, it's right there in my pocket, very accessible
especially if I'm out having a meal. It also shows photos of different quantities or sizes of food
or meals to enable me to choose and know the amount of insulin to take.
Fat secrets - this is another app that helps with carb counting of food
from different manufacturers as it can change from one supermarket to another, and also in cafes
if you buy a cheese and onion pasty from Gregg's, Asda or Ginsters
they could have different amounts of carbs in them so you'll need to adjust your insulin intake,
Around a year or so later I was offered a pump - well this changed my life even more,
the freedom it gave me and not worrying about calculating my insulin.
I also found an app to remind me to change my cannula - now a note pumps can be set to give
you a reminder but having a message on my phone as well helps when I forget to change
itafter the pump has beeped and if I can't do it straight away,
at my age I forget easily. I then accessed the Freestyle Libre
multiple finger pricking stopped - hooray! - and it was much more convenient.
I had real-time readings and indications in which direction my blood sugars were going.
This made things even more easy, especially when i heard about people using the meow meow
to convert the Libre to continuous glucose monitoring and wanted to give it a go.
I now have my blood readings sent to my phone, and my watch which is even more accessible..
I'm a walking technology person and have everything with me to sort out my diabetes.
My quality of life has really improved, I have freedom, confidence, ease of use
and I'm able to do what I want without worrying about my diabetes.
The Libre also sends my readings to the diabetic team at the hospital
so if I have a problem they can access them.
This helped greatly during the pandemic and we could have video meetings to
discuss our problems if we wanted to, therefore getting excellent remote care.
I've come a long way since that bombshell diagnosis
10 years ago - tech has helped me to improve my life in a big way.
I'm not frightened about forgetting things anymore and live life to the full.
I became the mayor of my town three years ago and had 12 months of fundraising for charity.
Of course my diabetes clinic was on the list and I abseiled off the top of my hospital - I raised
over 2 000 pounds for diabetes in Saint Helens. I'm nothing special and if I can do it anyone can
don't be afraid of technology - try it out and give it a go,
explore what is out there: apps, different ways to monitor glucose and insulin etc.
There are also new things on the horizon and I can't wait.
Once again give it a go and find out what's best to support and suit you
and your lifestyle - whatever your age. Remember, thanks for listening - age is only a number.
Wow Pat thank you - Pat Ireland, total inspiration as ever wonderful really
appreciated and a great use of tech and you know i cannot wait to see what challenge you
take up next and please keep me and everybody else posted.
But if you've got any questions for pat or suggested next challenges please pop it in the
chat you know Pat will be joining us actually for the q & a very soon in about five minutes or so.
So the panel is coming up i'll do the introductions in a very short while..