Where Have All the Test Strips Gone?

Imagine if you were told you were no longer allowed to access the tools that you needed to make proper decisions about your diabetes care. In a disease that requires us to constantly analyse our healthcare decisions, how would you manage your highs and lows if you didn't know they were even happening? How do you know how much that extra mouthful of dinner affect your glucose levels? Does the thought of having no way to tell how your body is being affected by your diabetes scare you? 

Stop imagining. This is now the reality for a lot of Australians living with Type 2 Diabetes.

"From July 1, all people with type 2 diabetes who are not using insulin can purchase an initial six months’ supply of subsidised blood glucose test strips.

After six months, people with type 2 diabetes who are not using insulin can access subsidised test strips if their doctor or an authorised health professional wants them to continue testing. This change follows the independent advice of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

Importantly, if a person needs access to subsidised blood glucose test strips for clinical reasons, they will continue to receive access. This may include people with gestational diabetes, on certain medications or people with inter-current illnesses."

Its hard to process exactly how awful these changes really are. I have Type 1 Diabetes, so I will continue to recieve subsidised test strips. However, all types of diabetes can end in the same dire consequences if we are not given the tools we need to adequately control our diabetes. 

The message that is being given to people with Type 2 Diabetes is that their diabetes care, and by extension, total health care, is not important or a priority. That their feet, eyes, kidneys or even lives are easily expendable in order to subsidise the debt and expenditure of Queensland Nickel. 

Many of the messages that people with diabetes see about their disease are the messages of prevention - the message that you should not end up like us, to be healthy, exercise, eat well, take the stairs, quit smoking and never drink alcohol. Yet in this case, that message is quite the opposite. Blood glucose testing is a reliable, in the long-run inexpensive way to prevent complications that are far more costly to the healthcare system than test strips. Furthermore, people with diabetes are encouraged to enjoy a healthy lifestyle to help prevent these complications  - but being healthy is much harder when people with diabetes are being denied access to an integral part of their diabetes care. Oral medications for Type 2 Diabetes can cause hypoglycaemia, which can be very dangerous, and needs to be treated immediately. Exercise may become a thing of the past to those who do not have access to test strips, as it can be very hard to manage safely, which anyone using any form of hypoglycaemic agents will know. 

Without access to blood glucose testing supplies, how do those with Type 2 Diabetes know when its time for them to move on from diet control to medication, and from medication to insulin? Without test strips, a person might remain hyperglycaemia for months on end with no idea, especially if they are not receiving regular HbA1c tests (which, with the changes to medicare subsidies for pathology tests, is more likely. I have even told my doctors that I will be moving from 3 monthly to 6 monthly blood tests in light of the extra costs). In some early-stage Type 2 Diabetics, where they are managed by a GP, they might only have an annual diabetes check-up. You also have to include those patients that are not inclined to seek medical advice often, and may ignore high symptoms if they are not encouraged to test their blood sugar levels.

The fact that there have been no provisions made for a patients right to take control of their own health is appalling. As stated, the ability to procure subsidised test strips will rest entirely with health professionals, and if they want the patient to continue testing. This further alienates the patient from their own healthcare, if they are not given the right to decide how closely they wish to monitor and control their own chronic illness. Access to doctors in some areas can be quite limiting, and this could negatively impact on the ability of a patient to receive that recommendation that they should continue testing. 

Having done my licence renewal recently, I note that this new policy doesn't seem to account for the requirement for anyone on any hypoglycaemic agent, oral or otherwise, to test their blood glucose levels before driving to ensure that they are above 5 and safe to drive. 

The implications of the decision to limit access to blood glucose testing strips to people with Type 2 Diabetes are already there. I hope that they will be realised before irreversible damage is done to any individual with diabetes.

Credit: Insulin Nation

Leaving the House with Diabetes in Tow

I do a lot of cleaning in my life. I like order, neatness and surfaces with nothing on them. My house probably gets 'spring-cleaned' 4 times a year. Once I'm done spring-cleaning my house, I'll move on to my paperwork, my computer & my emails.

I'm up to emails right now, and I'm happy to say I only have 4 emails in my inbox, all with actual useful information in them.

One of them, I can delete once this post is done. My husband sent me the picture below, and I never did anything with it until now. There was no explanation in the body of the email. There was no body of the email at all, just a subject line of "You Perty" (Thanks Hun, you perty too).

There wasn't really an explanation needed. We don't have kids. I do have diabetes though, and that's close enough. 

Some very bad photoshop skills later, and this is what I came up with:

Welcome Back King

At 1.30am on Tuesday morning I should have been sleeping, but I wasn't. Ignoring the fact that Brisbane was still almost too hot to exist at 94% humidity (Seriously Brisbane, we're mid-way through Autumn now), I had another reason to be blearily rubbing my eyes and yawning out any and all curse words I could think of. I was happily tossing and turning, kicking the sheets away and generally taking over as much bed space as possible when my husband shook me awake.

My pump was blaring away about something. I mashed some buttons, assuming it was nothing I needed to know about. It blared again, so I forced myself to crack open an eye and read the screen. Some sort of message about power failure and basal being stopped. I sort of knew it was coming because it had asked for 2 battery changes within 48 hours. I probably should have called the helpline then - but laziness and denial are some of my best friends. If I had called, I would have found out that apparently you can fix that particular power failure problem yourself, and it would have saved a lot of hassle afterwards. But 1.30am. 

I was tired and I just wanted to go back to the land of nod. I decided to set up my back-up pump, took the battery out of the malfunctioning pump, and shoved it deep within my sock drawer while it continued to beep about it's battery being removed. 

I called the helpline the next day, and they talked me through the power failure. Unfortunately, I had already set up my back-up pump with a sensor. I had swapped the transmitter to my old MiniMed transmitter when the pump malfunction happened, not wanting to waste a sensor that I had only put in 3 hours beforehand.

I am pretty impressed with the life of my MiniMed transmitter. I think that transmitter warranty life is about a year, but it has been kicking along for 3 and a half years now, and still holds charge well, whilst somehow seeming to give more accurate readings the older it gets. Though that could just be that I know all the tricks now.

So at least I have my back-up transmitter and pump working, but it's driving me nuts. I'm definitely a spoilt princess of diabetes land, and I'm used to my new technology.

I have to press the esc button to see my sensor readings, rather than having a beautiful, colourful graph and SG displayed on the screen at all times.

The sensor doesn't suspend before low - only on low. I actually have to treat hypos myself. I have a toothache right now because I've been having to have juices, when normally the sensor just catches me and I don't even think about it.

I have to scroll into a menu to set a temp basal. Being my lazy self, it just means that I haven't set a temp basal since swapping onto the old pump. With the 640G, the shortcut to a temp basal is on the screen, and only takes 2 seconds to set-up.

My meter doesn't connect!!! I have to save things manually in capture event. Sadly, my educator will just have to scroll through my meter because I am not bothering to capture that many events. And wearing a dress this week has been hard, not being able to bolus from my meter. Many, many strangers have seen my undies this week.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the old MiniMed, but I am so used to the 640G and its more intuitive programming. I swear, it can tell what I'm thinking and what I need. Its just a lot less thinking and time spent actually using the pump on my part. I kind of just let the 640G do its thing.

Thankfully I am connected back up to the 640G again with a new sensor due to start tomorrow morning. I'm going to treat this as an exercise in the art of appreciation.

NDS-What?

A week ago I received a letter in my mail from the NDSS, informing me that the way I received my pump consumables would change. I vaguely glanced at it, shrugged, and aimed it at the garbage for 2 points. I'd had a stressful week and wasn't in the right frame of mind to really comprehend what that horrible little letter contained, but it was still in the back of my mind.

The contents of the letter were dragged from the depths today when I had an email from my pump company, Medtronic, wanting to warn pump users of the impending consumables apocalypse. 

"Whilst the change-over date has been made clear, the timing and process for the transition is still very unclear...we are unsure of the impact of the transition and how you access your pump supplies during May and June....

To ensure you don’t run out, we urge you to consider stocking up now. This way you will have peace of mind during the next 4 months of supply transition."

This email was in response to the recent announcement:

"The Federal Government has announced that it will implement changes to the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS) from July 1, 2016...diabetes-related products will no longer be distributed through Diabetes Queensland or via other agents of Diabetes Australia interstate.

  

From July 1, subsidised NDSS products, such as needles, syringes, blood glucose test strips, urine test strips and insulin pump consumables will remain available, but through community pharmacies.'

From what I can gather, based on the wording in the article, is that this was a Federal Government decision, and not a good decision. I'm guessing that they think having pharmacy point collection is a good way to cut costs, either through being able to cut funding somehow if DA is no longer needed as an access point, or by cutting postage. Probably a brutal-budget mix of both.

The email from Medtronic today was essentially to say that so far, the federal government hasn't felt the need to clue them in on how this change of access points is going to happen. In an online-group discussion tonight, it was pretty clear that no-one knew how it was going to happen - including those group members who worked in NDSS pharmacies. 

At this point, the alarm bells going off in my brain have moved beyond a constant ringing to full-on emergency bomb-blast sirens screeching.

If the pump companies themselves and the NDSS access point pharmacies don't know what's going on, its probably time to panic, do as they suggest, and start hoarding supplies for the long haul. Winter is coming. I'm not trying to be a dramatist or anything, but I did just max out my bank card bulk-buying enough supplies to last a good 6 months.

I can only imagine that this warning telling everyone to start stocking up is going to impact on pump consumable stocks. Black-markets for hard-to-find pump supplies will start popping up soon. I better work on my haggling skills, and be ready to trade my first-born.

What's not also clear is:

1. - What the deal is for those who live rurally? They are likely to be impacted quite a lot by this move. Rural pharmacies may also be less likely to stock items if they only have 1 customer buying the product.

2. - How pharmacies will handle this in terms of stock levels? One of the reasons I like ordering online so much is because I can bulk order - and I always have, I usually order 4 months worth of supplies at once. Bulk ordering comes in handy not only for lazy people like myself, but those who are wanting to travel (I ordered so many supplies before I went overseas!), and again, those who live rurally and remotely. Pharmacies often place irritating self-imposed limits on how many of one item you can buy - for example they may allow you to only buy 1 or 2 boxes of test strips at a time. This will limit the ability to bulk order

3. - How are pharmacies expected to stock the necessary consumables? The test strips that I use are not stocked in store - presumably because pharmacies tend to only stock a few different types of test strips due to space restrictions. Same goes for pump consumables. Where are they finding the room to keep all the many, many different types of strips, reservoirs and canulas? Will they just have a wall devoted to diabetes care? With the amount of pump users in Australia, its not likely.

4. - If they're not stocking the consumables in store, are they ordering them on an 'in-demand' or 'special-order' basis? If so, how is this any different at all to letting us just order through DA? Same amount of postage because they'd just be getting small shipments in for each customer all the time. They wouldn't be able to wait until a certain amount of orders were reached - because again, there's not many Type 1's to begin with, let alone the much smaller number on pumps.

Another factor to consider, that I highly doubt the federal Government has even thought about it, is that this may directly impact on donations made to DA. Thus cutting support even further. I always include a donation every time I order - I factor it as 'postage costs' (seeing as we don't pay postage) and just hand it over as a donation instead. I don't miss the donations that I make, because they're small enough not to impact, but they can tot up to a fair bit over the year. I will of course still donate, but I run the risk of not remembering unless reminded. 

 I'm going to need to see a proper plan before I'll start to believe that this was ever a good idea on the federal government's behalf. Until then I'll be making sure I keep my hoard of supplies well stocked.

Cured: simple as that

I always start my weekends off with a good hourly dose of the newest Greys Anatomy. Because its Friday. And Friday night is the night I usually watch Greys Anatomy. Monday night is my night to cook. Tuesday night I don't go and visit my mother. You get the Flight of the Concords gist of things...Friday night is Grey's night, because that's the night the newest episode gets released.

Greys Anatomy is obviously taken with a very large grain of salt when you look at it from a medical viewpoint. I don't watch it for the medicine. I watch it for the Grey  & Mcdreamy get together-break up when Mrs. Mcdreamy arrives-get back together when Mrs. McDreamy leaves to start Private Practice-break up again-Grey sort of dies-Grey lives-Grey & McDreamy get back together-Grey and McDreamy adopt random African baby-Grey and McDreamy have own child-McDreamy works away from home-McDreamy dies-Grey has dead McDreamy's baby-drama. (Times this drama by every character ever. It's exhausting, but worth it for the mental workout you get trying to keep up with it all.)

On Friday's episode, the doctors at Grey Sloane Memorial Hospital (formerly known as Seattle Grace Hospital) did what they do best - performed a complex and probably improbable procedure to 'cure' a patient of his multiple sclerosis. If I ever develop any sort of super weird-hard to cure medical condition, Seattle Grace will be my go to hospital. Those doctors can solve all the crazy rare disorders.

Which is a problem, from an awareness point of view. It means the audience isn't ever set up to learn more about the medicine. What do I know about MS from watching that episode? I saw his hand shake a little, occasionally. That's it. I didn't expect to see all the complexities of living with a disease like MS, but I would have liked to have seen some. Disease can be quite character building, but instead I was distanced from the disease. Made to feel like it was unimportant, and the realities of his every day life were belittled. Focus was shifted entirely from the characters' MS (the entire reason he was even in the episode) and instead honed in on his suave pick-up lines, with the disease relegated as an itsy bitsy sub-plot built in to simply further a bit of fluff romance.

If the print and screen world is constantly curing everything, there's no chance to show what the condition is like in real life. It's lazy, and it says to the audience that those of us living with medical conditions aren't worth taking the time to learn about, or accurately portray.

When dealing with medical conditions in T.V. shows, writing, or any other media, there is a tendency to create the cure, rather than deal with the condition in a practical and realistic way. Maybe because it makes the plot too complex, or because writers and creators think it will be too hard to constantly factor that condition in. Maybe they worry they will lose audiences if they haven't learnt to sift out the mundane details of living with a disease, illness or disability from the really cool stories we pick up along the way.

Whatever the reason, there's a solution: Go and talk to a living gold mine; someone with the disease themselves. Get the basics, tell the basics. Get the humour, the happiness, the sadness, the fear, the anger, the community and tell that side of the story. You don't need to focus everything on the disease, but don't include a disability or otherwise to simply cure it 5 minutes later. Such lazy writing serves no purpose other than to illustrate a lack of compassion and understanding on your part, and to tell audiences that you are not creative enough to get to a particular plot point without disrespecting the experiences of your own characters. (And by extension, the real-life versions that you have based them off).

Access All Channels

What do you get if you place Jill Pantozzi, Michelle Goldsmith and Robert Hoge - 3 writers who are also prominent chronic illness and disability activists - in a room  with a few microphones? A superbly insightful panel on the use of disability and illness in journalism and story telling.

On Easter Sunday morning, when I should have been at home figuring out how much chocolate I could fit in my mouth for breakfast, I was instead hanging out at Contact, a speculative Fiction convention.

The 'Access All Channels' topic was more of a conversation between the audience and panelists, which was great. I felt like they really wanted to get writers involved in how they treat, write, and talk about illness and disability. Some really valid points were brought up, that made me think about the way that I write, and how I react to things that are written about diabetes.

One of the classic things written by diabetics that I see is the '10 things not to say to a diabetic' list. They always put a bit of a wry smile on my face as I play bingo with the things people have said to me. The list is meant to entertain within the circle of those who have the particular illness, disease or disability that it talks about. But what does that list mean to people who don't have the condition? What if that list is the first thing they ever read about what it's like to live with that particular ailment? It says to the reader "Don't say anything to me". It makes them afraid to say the wrong thing, and so they don't talk to us. Which limits their sources when they do genuinely want to read or learn about the disease. If they're reading that list in the first instance, then obviously they are curious; and straight away we are stifling their curiosity and heading them towards a path of ignorance.

What we want is actually the opposite. We want people to write through their ignorance. You can't know every in and out of a disease if you don't have it, and you can't hope to gain any knowledge without being given the chance to acquire it. That's a problem on our behalf, and its something that we should be more tolerant of. We should be encouraging people not to be shy about getting things wrong, because then we have the opportunity to educate about what is right if the person really does want to learn and therefore help us to educate even more people. We need to chill out, and see that if it really is a mistake made because the writer doesn't have that real world experience, that we should be happy to send some friendly facts. If one person has pointed it out, then we don't all need to point it out. I am guilty of this, I know I am. I hope that I can keep a more open mind to diabetes in media and writing.

That's not to say that every case can be treated in this way. Sometimes things are written that are genuinely and truly offensive. Jamie Oliver is a pretty prime example of being given multiple opportunities to recognise the ignorance and mistruths that he spreads, but he continues to do so, so as far as I am concerned he is fair game. You also have people like Cross fit's Greg Glassman, who when confronted with disappointment at his comments about diabetes, decided to step up the offense to a whole new level of 'Wow, you half-wit'.

Experiences can also vary from person to person with the same condition. There are things said about diabetes and surrounding policies, technologies, treatments or day-to-day life that I don't always agree with, and I have had to learn to distance myself from the views and opinions that I don't like - and I know that people will sometimes disagree with my opinions too. I recognise that everyone considers their own opinions valid, and that the more we allow talk about diabetes, the better it is for us (again, there will always be exceptions).

Understand where your knowledge base comes from, and that if you have the condition being talked about, that your knowledge base is alot more personal than that of someone who doesn't have the condition.

The point I guess, is understanding that the more writing is done about illness or disability, the more normalised it will become in society. Even if we consider the writing to be bad, we don't need to jump all over it and discourage the writer or publication from ever trying to share our experiences again. It can be hard work advocating for an illness, and we need them to want to be on our side and want to understand. A simple message about what you thought was wrong, unsafe or offensive might be all it takes for an issue to be resolved, and for the writer to think of their mistake as a positive learning experience, rather than a deterrent. It also shows them that we can be approached before publication to fact check if we act like a friendly bunch of people.

I'm not saying I'm going to be perfect at tolerance. I will have my exceptions - media releases on the blueberry tea cure are one, and if I think something could be dangerous for the illness it is speaking about, or it is apparent that there was an ability to fact check but the author was too lazy (Hansel and Gretel) then I'm likely to arc up. But I will stop and think if what I say about a piece of writing is really helping, or if its just being picky.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Morty

Happy chocolate sales day! I hope everyone managed to get some cheap chocolate bargains to keep aside for hypos.

As of yesterday, Morty (my diabetes) officially turned 4 years old. An Easter diaversary. Morty is nearly school-aged. I dread the day when Morty learns to count and realises that throughout the year I have only bought it 36 presents, throws a Dudley and starts screaming at me "36! But last year, last year I had 37!". I suppose I will have to do a quick Petunia on the situation and promise to buy it another 2 new CGM sensors to stop a full-blown blood sugar control meltdown from happening.

I suppose I might buy Morty a card. But what do you say to diabetes?

If I loved my diabetes more, I might talk about the day I bought it home from the hospital with me. And how bloody confused I was leaving after an overnight stay with a permanent part of my life that I didn't know how to care for. Would I tell Morty that I never wanted to bring him home with me, and wished I could leave him sitting in a bed of his own at the hospital forever? I probably wouldn't want to tell him he was unplanned.

I won't go off on that tangent though, because I don't love my diabetes enough to reminisce fondly about the first time I held a needle to my stomach.

I could talk about how it Morty has grown as a disease. The progressions I saw after getting past that initial 3 month period when my world became a complete blur of eating, injections, sleeping and crying everywhere.

How I saw changes as Morty grew from that volatile infant state to toddler stage. I sort of knew what I was doing and was managing to look like I had my shit together. I could leave my house with my hair and make-up done; looking composed and not at all like I had just dealt with a tantrum of epic proportions.

Maybe then I will talk about my dreams and hopes for Morty's future. How much I'm hanging out for him to grow up, because I'm not as fond of his childlike behaviour as he thinks I am. I have been told, however, that an unfortunate aspect of raising a condition like Morty, is that they don't grow up. The most I can hope for is that with lots of therapy (and money) his tantrums may become a little easier to control. That as he grows, I will get to know the early warning signs of a melt-down and soothe him before I'm left with a screaming toddler disease in aisle 3 of the supermarket, because he wants lollies NOW.

The sign off would probably read: 'Happy Birthday, sweet Morty.'

Hypo Tax got me like....

I have been busily documenting my recent trip overseas, so please excuse my absence. I'm about halfway through that, and it's taking me a really long time. So I took a break from here.

This is relevant to my trip overseas, I promise.

The UK recently introduced a Soft Drink Tax, to come in to effect in 2018. Drinks that have more than 8gm of sugar per 100ml will be taxed at a higher amount. I'm just going to put it out there that I struggled in the UK to find adequate hypo treatment. Everything already has reduced sugar over there. I spent time way too much time when I was hypo desperately reading the labels of drinks trying to find something that was of a high enough quick acting sugar percent to bring my BGLs back up to a safe number. When normally in Australia I can drink 1/4 of a bottle of sprite to treat a hypo, in the UK I was having to guzzle half or a full bottle to treat a hypo because of the reduced sugar. Extra calories I didn't need, and it left me feeling really seedy, because I don't normally drink much soft drink.

The other point to to make is - I don't think that a soft drink tax is going to do jack for the UK, when a sample standard diet includes fish, chips, pies, clotted cream, beer, pasties, salt on everything and anything else you can name that will clog your arteries. Jamie Oliver is one of those that pushed heavily for the sugar tax and I did have the misfortune to eat in one of his restaurants. No surprise that the healthiest thing on the menu was a fatty pork burger. You did have the option to change the chips for salad - if you paid extra. But we already knew that Jamie Oliver is very hypocritical when it comes to healthy eating, so no surprise there.

So Australia has recently decided they would like to jump on the cave-man 'sugar bad' trend and is looking at introducing a similar tax. I'm disappointed. I'm sick of the sugar fear mongering that goes on. The more we talk about sugar in these terms, the harder it is for the public to truly understand diabetes and how it actually all works. The message about 'sugar bad' gets through all right - but only enough for everybody ever to question why I'm having sugar if I have diabetes, because that's what they're told it gives you. If I already have diabetes, I'm not sure what they think telling me 'sugar bad' is going to achieve; maybe if I don't drink sugary drinks it will stop me from getting some extra diabetes on top of my diabetes?

The 'sugar bad' fear messages only serve to instill in the senseless public that people with diabetes chose this disease. It encourages hate towards us, as a by-product of the fear they feel when they do a mental calculation of how much soft drink they have consumed and have conculded that they have put themselves at risk of Type 2 Diabetes. It encourages poor diets (such as that god-awful Paleo diet that people crap on about) in wrong-footed attempts to 'undo' all the sugar they have consumed in their life. 

Sugar saves my life, on an almost daily basis. I don't think it's fair to tax that, or disillusion the public about the role that sugar plays in helping me to control my BGLs, and more importantly, stay alive. 

Currently sugary drinks are the best and cheapest means I have to treat a hypo. Drinks are often the best way to treat a hypo because simply swallowing when you're in the brain fog of a hypo is much easier than chewing and then swallowing. 

Whilst the tax may be aimed at the drink companies, they are more than likely to pass this on to consumers, or start to make products with less sugar (and thereby less effective in raising BGLs to safe levels). A 2L Coles lemonade costs little more than a dollar and can be used for about 10 hypos. Similarly, a 6 pack of poppers is only a few dollars, coming in at something like 50c per hypo. Glucose tablets on the other hand, whilst they are great to keep in my handbag, cost a small fortune. If you go by the way of Amazon, you can get the bottles of 50 pretty cheap, but be prepared to offer up your first born to pay for shipping. Even buying the True Plus brand available in Australia is obscenely expensive. A pack of 50 costs $15 and will treat approximately 12 hypos. This is more than $1 per hypo, when a Coles Lemonade is less than $2 for 10 hypos. 

It should be the aim of the diabetes bodies in Australia to protect the interests of those with diabetes first. Which means that if they want to support this sort of sugar-hate (and in turn diabetes-hate) movement, they need to have a strategy for education about how sugar works so that I can stop being harrased by the know-it-all who sees my medic-alert tag as I save my life with a Sprite. Importantly, they need to be ensuring that we will continue to have fairly-priced access to hypo treatments. 

Add to this that we can't nanny everybody. At some point, you have got to realise that people are free to make their own unhealthy choices. Education about food needs to be introduced earlier to children so they can make the correct choices to look after their bodies. I understand that we would like to decrease the rates of type 2 diabetes, but the people who get Type 2 Diabetes from lifestyle aren't just drinking soft drink. There's so many more factors to Type 2 Diabetes than a like for soft-drinks. You need to be looking at increasing exercise rates, reducing portion sizes, educating about healthy food choices. They've also been making those choices for a very long time, and probably won't stop with a price increase.

And honestly? While Macca's, KFC, chips and other fatty, salty and calorie-laden fast foods are around, we don't have a hope on curbing obesity rates by introducing a simple sugary-drink tax. Extend the tax to them and maybe we can start talking about potential nation-wide health benefits.

Until you do that, I spend enough on my healthcare already, don't make me add 'hypos' to the list of reasons I will probably never own a house.

Diabetes.It

I collect Diabetics. Accidentally. Not in a creepy, Ed Gein sort of way. I just happen to find them, everywhere.

In Italy, I found 2. Or 2 found me my pump. You can't really miss my pump, especially if you know what a pump is. King sticks out a little.

I met the first Type 1 diabetic in Venice. My husband and I were on a bit of a search for good gnocchi. Google recommended 'Osteria Al Milion', so off we went.

Just need a miniature quaffle...

It was a very warm, inviting little restaurant, and the quidditch-hoop inspired candle holders gave me a good vibe. We were seated and given the free bread basket that you seem to get whenever you sit down for a meal in Italy. I noticed that the lady who attended to us was eyeballing my pump. I didn't pay much attention, figuring she was probably wondering what sort of ancient MP3 player I had attached to my hip. A different waitress took our order. As I ordered, I noticed the same lady still eyeballing King from across the room. As soon as the waitress left our table, she hurried over.

"I have one too". Proudly, she lifted her shirt to show me her pump. "But mine is old". A beautiful and well kept white MiniMed Veo sat clipped over the lip of her trousers. If hers was old, she must have taken the best care of it. King is less than 6 months old and he looks like he's been in a few cat fights in that time.



I smiled in acknowledgment and she took the encouragement, coming over to stand next to us. "Your only the second person I have seen with diabetes. I saw another pump once, in the market." She paused. "It's hard".

I agreed with her, and we had a bit of a chat about the joys of diabetes. By now, the restaurant was filling up a bit. She excused herself as our food arrived. Before she left to attend to other patron she turned back with a warm smile, and gave me the carb counts to my gnocchi, the panna cotta I had ordered for desert and the bread I had eaten.

Pannacotta...carb count: Delicious so it doesn't matter.

A week or so later found my husband and I in Sorrento (where the weather was remarkably warm). From Sorrento, we took a day trip out to Pompeii, which was only a half hour train ride by the Circumvesuviana line. Pompeii was quite warm, and for the first time since arriving in Europe, I was walking around blissfully sans jumper, T-shirt only. My T-shirt of choice just so happened to be my Type 1 Diabetes memes, "Type One Dia-Bad-Ass" Tee.

It was as my husband and I were trudging our weary way back out of Pompeii that I found my second diabetic in Italy. I was just hitting hypo (after a 3 hour walk around Pompeii in the sun) and focusing on placing one foot in front of the other when I heard "Are you diabetic?". My head swivelled towards the direction the magic word had come from. "I saw your T-shirt". An American girl had outstretched her hand towards me, holding in it, yet another glorious Medtronic pump.

"Yep!" My face split into a shaky-hypo grin.

My husband shook his head as the American Girl and I started up a conversation. "Seriously? You have a superpower. Stand together, I'm taking a photo".

We obeyed, and he clicked a photo, while her friend (or boyfriend, I don't know) did the same.

I didn't find out her name, but I do have a picture of her. And I know she's from California, and that she's excited for the 640G, which they don't have in America yet, but her UK friends have told her all about it. I also know that she's awesome by default.

I'm in England now, and just waiting for London to give up the diabetic goods!

Brisbane Airport Take 2

I don't know how this is going to turn out.

I'm snuggled up in my hotel room in South Korea right now, tapping this out on a portable keyboard the size of my hand, and fighting with blogger about how to login from a tablet. Blogger is definitely winning this fight, and has forced me on to a very basic app with little functionality. But I'm trying anyway, just so Blogger knows that it hasn't broken my spirit yet.

So my honeymoon Fiiinally rolled around. Only 9 months after my wedding (That sounds like a long time. I could have had a baby in that time if Id wanted to!) We're off to Europe for a month, with a stopover in Korea tonight.

My insulin is back in the Fridge (*fingers crossed it lasts because the Fridge to Go was pretty much room temperature when we got to the hotel), and my BGLs behaved quite nicely on the plane, stayingf between 4 - 10.

I did get randomly seletced to do a full body scan at Brisbane International. My immediate thought was panic. Followed by panic. Then I remembered the handy little airport security card Medtronic give you, which yes, I had bought with me.

So random security guy (who looked very familiar,) who picked me out for this is trying to tell me the full body scanners are fine to go through with a pump because people with pace makers go through.  I wasn't having any of it and thrust my little palm sized airport security instructions under his nose. Unfortunately for me, the instructions do say that the pump is removable (which contradicted my doctors note). So my options were limited. I had to do the scan.

I made it really obvious that Iwas feeling very anxious about taking my pump off and just handing it over to a random I had never met before. They must train them better at International, because he actually listened. He explained the process step by step, and answered all my questions (unlike the last security douchebag I came across in domestic.

The deal was that he would walk my pump around the scanner, in my sight at all times. Then he stood at the other side of the scanner as I got in. As Igot scanned, he held the pump up in the air, hands towards me, at my sight level. Door opened, I got my pump back. Then he walked me over to the dexplosives/drug swab dude, explaining exactly why they were swabbing the pump, which was basically because it hadnt been through any screening points.

Whilst I wasn't entirely happy at having to take my pump off and hand it over, I was very thankful to the security guy for realising how anxious I was about this and taking the time to explain what was happening and why, and doing what he could to help a situation that I wasn't comfortable with.So kudos to him.

Only 2 more airports to go through, and hopefully I won't get selected for 'random screening'.