No I’m not referring to the wonderful set of friends within our local Hampshire/Dorset Sugarbuddies support group, but to the performance of Jade Byrne’s show Pricks. The Play.
“I’ve had over 70,000 pricks… of the medical kind. This is my chance to set the record straight about type 1 diabetics like me. Despite what people say, I’m not bankrupting the NHS. And I can eat a cake – a whole bloody cake – if I want to.”
I’d seen it before, at TAD2019, along with my daughter Amy. We both enjoyed it and thought we’d go and see it again when it toured nearby. That was last night in Bournemouth, but typically the rest of my family were away, so I jumped at the chance to go with the Sugarbuddies support group I helped set up many years ago. I’ve been neglectful of Sugarbuddies for the last year, related to the lack of involvement I have in general Type 1 care for Amy, she does it all herself.
Even before the show it was a good night out, with a long chatty car journey with people I knew and people I didn’t, and more to follow in the bar before the show.
Wearing my ‘Deliberately Non-Compliant / WeAreNotWaiting’ t-shirt – which only comes out for diabetes events – I was spotted by a lady who saw me present at the JDRF Discovery Day in Southampton in March, and it was nice to hear how positive she found that event.
On to the show, which even watching for the second time, I thoroughly enjoyed. There were laughs a lot of the time, some gasps and an awful lot of nodding in agreement. The partially renovated Shelley Theatre must have been slightly dusty – ahem, not really – because at some points my throat felt tight and I could see others’ eyes were affected, coinciding with some of the sadder parts of the play and its tales of either Jade’s or others’ experiences.
Most of the audience had a connection to diabetes in some form, such as the guy sat next to me. “Do you know much about Type 1 Diabetes?” I asked. “I’ve had it twenty years” came the reply, before we had a nice chat about Sugarbuddies and what we’re trying to do with it.
For those who had no connection to Type 1, and for those who do, Jade held a Q&A session (luckily in the bar) after the event. What a great idea I thought, and it showed as people asked her questions and looked at some of the merchandise she had for sale. I stupidly sent Amy a picture of the Insulin Junkie sweatshirt to see if she’d like one, she did, I bought it – I should really keep away from Messenger, it would save me some money.
Although, this year’s tour dates are almost at a close I’d thoroughly recommend keeping an eye out for future performances.
I first met Tara at a presentation I gave at the Sugarbuddies conference back in September, where I’d already tapped her up to talk about Loop for a few minutes, which got extended due to the interest in the audience. I feel Tara and I may become a local looping double-act and I’ve already asked her to help at a presentation in April.
“We’re thinking of running a DIY looping Hot Topic at the professional conference” the Diabetes UK Director told me, “and we’ll ask (Dr) Emma (Wilmot) to run it”. (A Hot Topic is usually quite a short session of 15 minutes or less.)
Yesterday saw a great conference in Swansea for PWDs*, organised by Diabetes UK Cymru lead Dai Williams and his team. It was an honour to be able present alongside many people I consider friends and I just loved everyone’s presentations.
With forecasts of a mini-blizzard hitting London I did wonder whether that one snowflake would mean all roads would be closed towards London, but I set off at an eye-blearing-6am, picking up my friend Anna on the way.
She’d done similar stuff before, she’d spoken in front of 200 HCPs twice before but then the answers she gave were very short. She’d presented Nightscout and WeAreNotWaiting alongside me to Directors at JDRF and Diabetes UK, and to the team at Oxford. DPC2017 was different, as she stood there – alongside my friend Philippa and Dr Hussain – she answered Dr Hussain’s questions, elaborating on them with anecdotes and telling stories about school life, German exchange trips and the difference between two holidays in India, one on MDI, the next one using an insulin pump. 
Amy’s spring and summer is a whirlwind.
I watched numbers in their 2’s appear, then 1’s.
Either you wish the world would swallow you up or you laugh it off, as you should.
Shortly after last year’s Nightrider there was a little conversation on our 
Strava and Facebook are great motivators, people put up their rides, you see it and feel guilty you haven’t ridden for x days, so you go out for a ride and post it on Strava/Facebook afterwards. And so on.
The curry, or rather the tube to/from had made us late for registration, it was bedlam, no-one knew where to queue up to get their ride numbers and hi-viz vests. Luckily Daniel’s wife Julie went into event organiser mode and sorted us out, thank goodness as we’d never have set off for ages otherwise.
Jamie Reed opened the talks with a great line saying we are the people we have been waiting for and how we can make the difference. Nodding in agreement I felt like shouting WeAreNotWaiting but the introvert on my shoulder got the better of me, thank God. Further talks about research which ended with Karen Addington, JDRF’s Chief Executive, who was a pleasure to listen to and brought a lump to my throat when she proudly held a 
Dr Weston’s presentation started with Autonomic Neuropathy and almost lost me within minutes; I feared today’s presentations might be too much for my little brain to understand but actually it was fascincating, and scary, but mainly fascinating.
Not only leading in her field, Professor Cooper is proof that having Type 1 need not stop anyone and she’s proved this during the 50 years since being diagnosed. I find it wonderful being in the company of people with such experience and each one (Derek, Lis, Pat and now Helen) has a great and happy outlook.
Dr Agwu presented about Toddlers with Type 1, something I’ve always been grateful we didn’t need to deal with: people often say they don’t know how families like ours cope, well I don’t know how families with toddlers cope.
Mike is a natural presenter, eloquent, factual, meaningful messages and (sadly for me) too blooming funny: how on earth was I going to have the funniest presentation after his?
Dr Krone gave a great talk about the benefits of CGM and gave some real life examples of people who thought their diabetes management was excellent yet spent most of every night in a very long hypo.
After the tea break it was my turn.
Due to my running well over time Helen had little time left, I felt guilty.
Once again the Stupid o’Clock alarm rang again and a quick check of Twitter told me that I wasn’t the only one awake and excited that today was the first ever UK day of TED style talks from people who live with Diabetes.
Wes progressed to the Nightscout story quite familiar to me – due to the presentations I’ve been giving to JDRF, Diabetes and the CYP NW Network – from the beginnings from the “7 guys on the internet” who thought “maybe 50 families” might be interested in setting up Nightscout. Less than two years later 16000 people are in the largest T1 Facebook group in the World, with 6000 more in the 27 country specific Nightscout groups around the world.
One of the highlights of being on the stand was when Pratik approached me with his team and asked for a quick run down on Nightscout, so that he could understand what his patients might be using or need to know.
“Call me Kath” said Professor Barnard when I introduced her to Amy and Jane. Moments before I’d wished the earth would swallow me up as moments before that Kath had recognised me (from Social Media avatars/photos) and I hadn’t recognised her. A tad embarrasing and not the best first encounter. Still we we’re lucky that Kath could make it to the event as years ago I was almost responsible for her untimely death, after telling her how simple it was to replace a broken dimmer switch. Turns out it is simple if you’ve done it loads of times, not so simple if you haven’t. Anyway, I was pleased I hadn’t killed Kath and I’ll be careful not to discuss electrics with anyone else ever again.
Last year’s 
After finding my Saturday event cancelled and disappointed that I could have attended the conference’s first day I couldn’t face the excitement on Twitter and decided to I needed to distance myself. So I positioned myself up one of my apple trees to give it a little prune, I think I may have overdone it as it took all day.