BeingDiabetic.co.nz » Nic

BeingDiabetic on indefinite hiatus.

Nic — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 23:11:44 +0000

Hi all

This blog is currently in hiatus, for an indefinite time. If you wish to be emailed if/when it starts up again, please go to the Subscribe page and sign up with your email address – you’ll get an email should the blog start up again.

Meanwhile, there will be tidbits going up on the BeingDiabetic Facebook page, so feel free to go over there and become a fan too.

All the best

Nic and Aaron

A Christmas farewell.

Nic — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 21:04:48 +0000

As most of you will know from my post a couple of weeks ago, BeingDiabetic is going into an indefinite hiatus after today as we roll into 2011.

Aaron and I both wanted to do a bit of a wrap up, so here goes…

Nic

Well, it’s hard to believe that BeingDiabetic has been running now for 2.5 years, although at the same time I look back on the thousands of hours we’ve clocked up in bringing it to you it almost seems surprising that it’s only been that long! (if that makes any sense).

We’ve come a long way since the first posts in July 2008 (see them here). We’ve…

Another great piece of D art.

Nic — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:24:34 +0000

Thanks very much to Nickie who sent me this picture last week. I’ve copied in her message below. Well done Blake for educating all the people at school!

the kids and (I supervised the hot glue gun) made this up for our ‘home school’ project fair. Some mums even had serious tears in their eyes. They said they understand Blake has to have needles etc – but when it was displayed this way it brought it home to them what he (and us) have to go thru. This apparantly provoked alot of childrens’ discussions about Blake on the way home in parent’s cars from this project fair.

LCT’s DIABECELL® Registered for Sale and Use in Russia

Nic — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:51:23 +0000

Hi everyone – this just hot off the press from an email I just received from Living Cell Technologies, which is the company doing pig cell trials in NZ under Professor Bob Elliot. This is pretty big news! Press release dropped in verbatim, below…

Company Announcement10 December 2010 – Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand– Living Cell Technologies Limited (ASX: LCT; OTCQX: LVCLY), a global company pioneering the development of cell implants to treat diabetes, announced today that its Russian subsidiary, LCT Biomedical Limited, has received registration of the Company’s groundbreaking diabetes treatment, DIABECELL, as a marketable medical technology in Russia. Registration allows for the sale and use of the DIABECELL technology in the treatment of Type 1 diabetes in…

She gon’ blow this joint up!

Nic — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:32:29 +0000

I went on a last minute work trip last week, to Adelaide for a few days. I used to travel a lot more frequently before I had a mortgage and a family (!) but these days (judging by the lack of stamps in my passport), an overseas trip is more of a once a year type thing.

Dunno about you, but airports (and all the personnel which go with ‘em) always make me feel a bit nervous. Not nervous as in shaking in my boots, but I always feel like I have this fake smile plastered on my face as I go through customs and the scanning areas which is supposed to convey a sort of, “HI GUYS, I’m just…

A very cool D shot from one of our own.

Nic — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:45:35 +0000

I was super impressed when I saw this piece of art constructed by one of the BeingDiabetic community members, Tania.

Awesome!

4, 200 km for diabetes!

Nic — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:30:37 +0000

Thanks to Grace McKnight for sending me an email about this challenge. Grace is a T1 (since age 13) and her Dad, Colin and his friend David have decided to bike all the way across Australia (from Perth to Sydney), all the while raising money for Diabetes New Zealand. They started on Thursday.

In their words:

This madness of cycling from Freemantle (Perth) to Sydney in summer was David’s idea but it did not take any arm bending to get on my bike for this. Depending on the winds it should take us between 28 to 34 days, so maybe an average of 120 to 140 km a day. We will carry most of what we need with top ups…

What do you do with your sharps?

Nic — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 05:41:11 +0000

Hi all – I had a request to post this, so here goes:

Hey guys,
My name is Oriana Hill, a registered nurse and I work at Diabetes Auckland. I am currently looking at the issue of how easy or not it is to get rid of your sharps. I do not have diabetes myself, I did however have gestational diabetes a few years ago, and I was put onto insulin and remember taking my sharps back to the clinic. I know that although there is a needle exchange programme running in Auckland, that people with diabetes are unable to access this.
Just wanting to hear your stories: sharps and the effects not having a service

…

Get it while it’s hot.

Nic — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:11:18 +0000

Well, readers, I’ve not come to this decision lightly. I’ve been going back and forward on it for many months, in fact. But, today I am announcing that BeingDiabetic is going on an extended break in 2011. There are a lot of challenging things coming up for Aaron and I next year and unfortunately this means even less time for the blog. And if I can’t do something of a decent quality, I’d rather not do it at all.

A lot goes on behind the scenes of a blog which you wouldn’t necessarily think of. There’s the obvious: researching and writing posts, finding and cropping images, coming up with interesting polls, reading the latest news on what’s happening in diabetes…

Weight control with T1.

Nic — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:25:14 +0000

I got this email from a reader last week. Wow – how incredible is her HbA1c?! Would love your feedback on her query below.

I am a T1 who has struggled a lot with keeping my weight in check. While my HbA1c’s are always in the range of 5.7 – 6.0, my weight is always the casualty. I think that partly it has to do with that awkward relationship to food we diabetics have and insulin itself increases appetite. I hate to have to eat if I don’t feel like it and at other times protest against me being diabetic by overeating and then correcting. Is anybody else having problems with that?