#PWDC15 – The People With Diabetes Conference – The Sessions

In the last post about PWDC15 I wrote about how I felt about the day and how it all started; in this post I’ll go into the sessions.

My main focus would be anything parent or carer related, diet related and teenager related and of course if I could match that up with some cycling talk that would be great. Within a couple of seconds of staring at the agenda I knew my first two sessions:
          Session 1 – Partners’ Moan, hosted by James.
          Session 2 – D in Teenagers, hosted by Marianne.

At some point I hoped to attend either the Food / Diet / Issues session or Low Carb.

Session one – Partners’ Moan

In fairness I was having too much fun chatting with people face to face so I totally missed the start of James’s Partners’ Moan session, rocking up late when there was no seats left, but luckily my wife let me share hers.
I’ve known James for a while and wasn’t surprised that he proved himself to be an excellent session host, with many things to ask and many (, many 🙂 ) things to say. The topics were varied and almost everyone in the room was engaged with the conversation touching all areas of living with someone who has diabetes.
It was sad to hear how some people – like me occasionally – have trouble sleeping because of worries about night time hypos for their partner/child and I offered a couple of ideas how to make things easier.
Some stories were funny, some were sad and others down right worrying and some very, very good points were raised by all. I found James’s thoughts particularly interesting, although in the interests of confidentiality we’ll keep these secret between the session attendees, James and his wife.
I realised part way through that there were two Type 1’s in the session but I’m really glad they came as it gave us carers/family a really good insight into how they see things; I’m pretty sure they also got a lot out of it.

Session two – D in Teenagers

In what turned out to be a theme for the day I was (fashionably?) late for this session.
I was pleased to see my wife Jane already in there along with friends Karen, Rachel and Marianne who I’d met for the first time earlier that day, after years of chatting on Twitter and Facebook. Another chap named Nick was there, he’d had Type 1 since an early age – it turned out I’d cycled with him last year in the inaugural TeamBG Cycle up Box Hill.
I’m so glad Rachel and Nick went to that session as without them we would have just been a few parents with still unanswered questions. Their stories whilst maybe a little worrying were evidence that things don’t need to always be spot on to turn out well in the end.

Lunch and time for Amy to shine

Lunch-time came far too quickly but gave another opportunity for networking, saying hello to more people I knew from Twitter and Facebook, like chatting with with Rhodri and talking to Paul S about my recent work on xDrip, seeing Amy & Emilia quite relaxed whilst chatting and playing games with people they’d never met.
That for me was a lovely thing of the day, where people felt at ease to go up to Amy, introduce themselves and chat about stuff. Like Vicki who chatted with Amy about xDrip, and others who asked her how she felt about being ‘stalked’ with xDrip – for the record she doesn’t mind too much. Hey and look at that on the picture, 5.1, nice!

Session three – Low carbing (and a bit of cycling)

…if you want to

Guess what, I was late for the start of this one too.
This session was hosted by Sacha, another cyclist I met on the TeamBG Box Hill ride last summer. We’ve bumped into each other quite a few times online since, especially in the low carb arena where he’s gone from strength to strength. Also in the session was Rachel & Andrew whom I’d met before and amongst others was Jeff who I’ve known for a while but never met before. Some guys from the sports nutrition company Torq were also there.
Sacha started the rounds asking people to say how many carbs they consumed a day on average and numbers ranged from 150 to 20, with the guys Torq stating that it wasn’t worth asking them, on account of the number they consume. Interestingly most agreed that the carb count shouldn’t normally include any sport fuelling for long rides. Discussions were had on foods that work, foods that don’t, tips and tricks – such as Jeff who goes for snacks of Pecan Nuts as “they’re cheap in Lidl”, in contrast to Sacha’s (and my) Macadamia Nuts which certainly are not cheap in Lidl.
I asked if anyone drank Bulletproof Coffee and kind of wish I hadn’t when I described it and saw the look of horror on their faces. I initially came back with a ‘it’s not as bad as it sounds’ before agreeing with Sacha that it was an ‘acquired taste’.
I really loved this session as I have never felt at ease talking about LCHF on Twitter or Facebook due to the fact that I’ve faced abuse because of it. In this arena we all shared the same aim and belief and it was good.