T1 Christmas dinner.

23 November 2009
2 Comments

Hi all

I’ve got about twelve people down for the final ‘BeingDiabetic And Friends’ dinner this year…. who else wants to come along? Sorry to those of you who are outside of Auckland, it’s in one location only so far (but by all means put a comment below if you want people to hook up with in your area, I can introduce you to each other).

The Christmas dinner is happening on Monday, 7th December. Email me at the address on the contact page if you want details. Come one, come all.

Nic

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By Nic on 23 November 2009 at 5.05 pm
Posted in Food, Slice of Life
This post has 2 comments so far. Add yours here.

Consumables help from WINZ?

20 November 2009
11 Comments

Hi everyone, just a quick one – I was having a conversation with a fellow T1 mum yesterday and she has been doing some looking into pump consumables (and their lack of funding or subsidy – booooo). Apparently there is actually some funding to be had from WINZ based on means testing (apparently you have to earn less than $791.53 gross per week).

Anyone out there got any more details on this? Thought it might be useful for some readers.

EDIT: Make sure you check out the comments as there has been some really useful advice given.

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By Nic on 20 November 2009 at 12.34 pm
Posted in Funding
This post has 11 comments so far. Add yours here.

A pump is not the silver bullet!

19 November 2009
9 Comments

We had friends around for dinner last night, and the conversation turned to the fact that I’ve been so lucky to get a loan insulin pump. This is absolutely not a slight on these particular friends, more of a general observation.

What I find really difficult is when people find out you have an insulin pump and say things like “Oh wow that makes it so easy for you!” or automatically assume that because it hooks up to your body and it’s computerised that it works it all out for you and you just have to be a passive participant while the pump just takes care of your diabetes for you.

Oh how awesome that would be!

I say I…

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By Nic on 19 November 2009 at 8.57 am
Posted in General, Insulin Pumps
This post has 9 comments so far. Add yours here.

Help us lobby for subsidised pumps and consumables!

17 November 2009
2 Comments

Hi all

I had a meeting this afternoon with a very enthusiastic young lady named Ruth, who, like me was lucky enough to get one of North Shore’s loan pumps. She too was on a pump during her pregnancy then had to give it back six weeks after her son was born and go back to injections.

Fuelled by how well she got on using the insulin pump, she has started pulling together a few plans of attack in how we are going to fight the good fight here in NZ and at least get on a level with Australia in terms of funding for insulin pumps and consumables.

A lot of her work is a WATCH THIS SPACE at…

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By Nic on 17 November 2009 at 2.39 pm
Posted in Funding
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The brilliant work of Dr Denise Faustman.

16 November 2009
3 Comments

Thank you very much to Jane, who sent me a link to the newly launched website Help Cure Childhood Diabetes (for those of us T1s who are longer in the tooth, fear not, they are talking T1 – but I gather they get more bang for their heartstring-pulling buck by talking about the kids). Jane’s daughter is one of the kids they’ve used as a case study – awesome work Rachel! Her page is here: http://www.helpcurechildhooddiabetes.org/Rachel.html.

I was previously unaware of the work of Dr Denise Faustman, who is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Immunobiology Laboratories of Massachusetts General Hospital. Her take…

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By Nic on 16 November 2009 at 6.20 pm
Posted in Science & Research
This post has 3 comments so far. Add yours here.