'I gave my adult diagnosis too much of my brain' Adult diagnosis and perimenopause with Isla Munro

‘I’m ready to put more life back into my life.’

Get ready for a beautiful bolt of warmth, wit and wisdom from today’s guest, as we’re digging into the twists and shifts of an adult diagnosis with Isla Munro.

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 43 in 2021, her insight into the realities of the emotional side of type 1 diabetes was already more extensive than most of us living with the thing.

Exactly two years earlier, one of the participants of Isla’s renowned art challenge 100 Days Project Scotland had taken up the challenge to work through her own adult diagnosis, creating a striking set of posters to raise awareness of the unseen sides of the type 1 diabetes.

That participant is none other than former Type 1 on 1 guest, graphic designer, illustrator and incredibly talented human Alex Durussel-Baker, creator of Diabetes By Design.

Art lecturer Isla talks through the insight she gained from Alex’s project both pre and post diagnosis, and how she got to grips with what she calls ‘a shift into a different gear’ when type 1 diabetes landed.

From the stark contrast in energy levels to finding power in finding her voice, and the life-changing magic of being able to eat an apple for the first time in years - Isla has found her own rhythm in making the space that diabetes demands. 

We also talk about the next shift - into perimenopause, and how diabetes has also given her a different perspective on what her body can do. 

Discover the 100 Days Project Scotland.
Read Isla’s blog about her diagnosis - 100 Days-ish of Diabetes.
Follow Isla on Instagram.

DISCLAIMER
Nothing you hear on Type 1 on 1 should be taken as medical advice. Please consult your healthcare team before making any changes to your diabetes or health management.

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SPONSOR MESSAGE
This episode of Type 1 on 1 is sponsored by Dexcom. Using Dexcom CGM has given me so much confidence to make informed diabetes treatment decisions in the moment.

You can choose to wear it on your arm or your abdomen, and all Dexcom CGMs have the share and follow feature even when connected to an insulin pump, so family and friends can see your glucose levels and get alerts, giving that extra bit of support when needed.

Head to Dexcom.com to request a free Dexcom ONE+ sample.

Always read the user manual for important product aspects and limitations. Talk to your doctor for diabetes management terms and conditions and terms of use. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Type one on one is sponsored by Dexcom.
More on that later. Just to say, as with every
episode of Type one on one, nothing you hear within
this podcast episode is intended to be nor should be
taken as medical advice, and you should absolutely seek the
advice and guidance of a healthcare professional before making any
changes to your diabetes management. If you want to come

(00:21):
and say hi, you can do so at Studio type
one on one on Instagram and I I'd love to see
you there. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Type one on one,
a podcast that delves into the obscure, complex and challenging
world of life with type one diabetes. I'm Jen Grieves,
and each week, with the help of some brilliant guests,

(00:44):
I'll be showing that there is no normal when it
comes to handlink this whopper of a chronic condition, because
we're all pretty much figuring out the messiness of day
to day life with diabetes as we go, and most
of all, even though it doesn't always feel like it,
we are absolutely not alone. We're going to Lovely Leath

(01:04):
in Edinburgh to day to speak to my guest, Eiler Munroe,
in her role as program director and lecturer in Product
Design at the Edinburgh College of Art. Alongside heading up
the one hundred Days product Scotland, which is no small thing,
Ela was keeping herself more than busy back in twenty nineteen.
The one hundred Days project is a daily creative challenge,

(01:24):
and in November of that year, Eila attended an exhibition
by one particular participant, Eila's good friend and former Type
one on one podcast guest Alex J. Russell Baker, under
the name Diabetes by Design. Alex had created one hundred
incredibly powerful posters to help process her own adult diagnosis
while raising awareness of type one diabetes. For Eiler, that

(01:46):
project took on a whole new meaning when two years later,
almost to the day, she was herself diagnosed with type
one diabetes at the age of forty three. I just
got goosebump saying that lovely, Isla, welcome to Type one one.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Hello, thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh, thank you so much for being here. This is
such a treat and what a small world. Hey, this
whole thing and situation, how you found yourself kind of
they're two years later to the day.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I know it's it was incredible because she actually Alex
launched her exhibition on the thirty first of October and
then my diagnosis was the fourth of November, two years later,
and I so she was the first person that I
messaged outside the hospital to be like if you need anyone?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Oh how nice to have that link in what is
you know? As we know and the listeners know is
such a confusing and frightening and overwhelming time. So we'll
get onto that. But how are you today?

Speaker 3 (02:48):
I'm good?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Thanks, I'm good. Yeah. I was working from home today
so I've had time to kind of prepare and I
found myself busying myself and then realized I had to
do my libre change and I haven't done that.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Okay, that's properly on Brad.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
But yeah, today has been a good day, a fairly
calm day. So yeah, I'm doing well.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Thanks Lovely and the Lee brays On STAMPI and we've
actually met, which kind of sparked the idea for this
as well, because I went to speak at one of
Alex's exhibitions in Edinburgh and we had we had a
good old chin wag about this chaos. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
a lot, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Kind of I kind of fangirled you a little bit actually,
because I genuinely had listened to you. I'd heard you
speak so many times because I've been listening to the podcast.
I thankfully. I mean, I've got so many things to
thank Alex for, but one of the main ones is
that she told me about your podcast and I binged you,
like proper binged you, so you were your voice was

(03:49):
so familiar because you've been in my ear for so often,
and then I was like you in the flesh, a
real person.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
That voice is attached to a humor, oh no, and
it came with like such a lovely familiarity. But also
I was there seeing your work and your things because
it was the time when the project was on as well, right,
And it's a beautiful thing. Like I'd love to start
with the art because that is what brings you and

(04:15):
Alex together, and that exhibition, as I've witnessed it is
just so incredibly beautiful, and as living with type one diabetes,
just so incredibly powerful. Was that your introduction to the
condition or did you have any prior knowledge?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
No, so I'm I suppose as a type one there's
a lot of people who've never met another one in
the wild, so to speak. But I was quite lucky
in that my godparents' third son, who is the same
age as my sister, so fifty now, he was diagnosed
when he was ten, so we used to visit them

(04:51):
in the summer, so I knew a little bit about it,
Like there was always a are you sure you need
another potato or you know, so there was conversations and
there was weighing of food and there was a tupperware
in the free but I.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Didn't really know the ins and out of it.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
And then my best friend at high school, Jackie, who
I sat next to in registration and then was pals
with all the way through. She was a type one
as well. But all I remember from that is her
giving me her glucose tablets because I tried tried one
one day and liked it, and now I'm like, why
were you giving them to me?

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Like stop it?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
So I had a kind of peripheral understanding. But then
I knew Alex as part of the creative community, because
we're super lucky in Edinburgh, We've got a great creative community.
And Alex, when she came to Edinburgh, started a chapter
as part of Creative Mornings, which I don't know if
you know, but it's a kind of global breakfast seminar things.
So it's fantastic, and that's kind of how i'd met

(05:48):
Alex before. So I did something at Creative Mornings to
talk about one hundred Days, which then meant Alex knew
about the hundred Days. So it was a kind of
perfect alignment really when she got her diagnosis and was like,
how am I going to work through all of these
complex feelings? And as a designer, I mean as a
creative we often go to I'm going to use the

(06:10):
skills that I have in a way to kind of
exercise that. So she embarked on something that I would
probably advise people in the one hundred Days not to
do because she gave herself so much, but she did
it amazingly, and I think by the end of the
one hundred Days project she'd managed something like sixty five posters, which,
of course, as we know, didn't come alone. They came

(06:31):
with a nugget of really well researched information. So I'd
been kind of lapping up that project all the way
through and was just so there was so much that
I didn't know about a condition that I had kind
of peripheral knowledge of for decades, so I was constantly like.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Whoa, I never knew that, and what coffee?

Speaker 1 (06:50):
No carbs but what?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
So every day when I read one of her pieces
as it popped up, I was just gobsmacked. So yeah,
I think when I actually sat in the diagnosis, I
knew terminology that I probably would never have known had
I not seen the art work and therefore the information
that went along with it.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So yeah, it was it was incredible.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Actually wow, And definitely we're going to come into the diagnosis,
but I'd love to speak to you just just before
we get into all of that, about the power of
art and the way it can communicate things like for me,
the way I relate to it, like I am, I
would say, I'm very creative. I've done more writing than art,
But certainly this is all part of it one in

(07:35):
terms of like processing emotions, how you feel, how you
see the world, making sense of things, Like I know
you love your job as a lecturer, so I'd just
like to hear you talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
I love it well that I think it's important to
sort of maybe talk about the reasons that I started
doing the one hundred days in the first place, because
I think, and I don't know if you ever found this.
Working in quite a creative industry anyway, and being creative
sometimes the the work that we do leaves no time
for us to be personally creative. We're being professionally creative.

(08:06):
And my job as a lecturer is to kind of
facilitate the creativity of others. And so I think I
joined the project when it belonged to not that I
own it, but when a lady, a graphic designer in
New Zealand called Emma Rogan, had started I think the
project in twenty eleven and I'd come across a ted

(08:28):
talk that she'd done and was super inspired by it,
and about two years in a row had said, I'm
going to do that, and then I never did it.
And I was like, if you don't make time for it,
and if you don't do it, you're never going to
do it. So I realized that I needed kind of
collective accountability because I will never let my friends down,
but I constantly could be perceived as letting myself down

(08:50):
because I will I'll put myself at kind of that
bottom of the wrong and if I cancel something that
I've put in, that's okay, but I would never cancel
on someone else. So I thought, right, okay, well, I
need to get other people involved then, so that I'm
not letting anyone down, which I should probably talk to
somebody about.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
But now I can relate. I can relate.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, And I think so what I did is as
part of that project in twenty seventeen, I decided to
do it. I signed up for it, and then I
booked a space in the university for day what would
be day one hundred and three, and I said, I'm
going to put on an exhibition and it might be
it might be a solo exhibition, or if I find

(09:30):
other people that want to come along with me, they
can do it. And I posted all that on social
media and we ended up with quite a cluster of
people in Edinburgh because I just told everybody that I met,
by the way, I'm doing this. Do you fancy do it?
You're quite great if you draw, why don't you get involved?
And we ended up with this cluster of people. And
then through the project, somebody else involved in the project

(09:50):
realized that there were there was this cluster in Edinburgh
and suggested maybe an Edinburgh exhibition and I was like, well,
I've already got space booked, why don't you come. So
we had in twenty seventeen the most northerly exhibition. And
the reason that I did that is because I wanted
to be creative and I didn't have an outlet for
doing that, and where what I lecture in my kind
of job as a designer is product design, and it's

(10:12):
about products and services and systems, and I actually think
there might be a frustrated illustrator in me somewhere that
wants to visually communicate with people as well. So that
was kind of my method for doing that. And when
Emma Rogan said she was going to step away in
twenty eighteen, I'd kind of approach her already and said,
we're already a day behind you because you're in New

(10:33):
Zealand you kind of meet the sun first. So if
we could do something more Scottish base and remain affiliated,
would you be up for it? And she was like, habit,
go do it. That's have fun. So that's when it
started in twenty eighteen. Year on year, I kind of
count the days for people, so we start at a
particular time, and then each day I post something.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
It used to be.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
I'd like hunt for door numbers or numbers out in
the world, like bus timetables and things like that. And
now I've kind of put it all together and I'm
doing my own work as the daily count, and then
kind of bringing people together. But it's interesting that you're
saying about writing rather than kind of art. But we
have loads of different people taking part, and writings often

(11:16):
a really big part of that. I had one one
of our particular kind of I was going to say
repeat offenders. I don't mean it that way. Somebody that
like a serial dred a returning hundred dare Kirsty. She's
wonderful and she's a wordsmith and poet and English teacher

(11:37):
and just wonderful human being generally. But she's done everything
from pudoku, which was a sudoku but using poetry, so
she'd take nine words and resolve it in some sort
of poetry, which is just mind boggling. One year she
did limericks, and because she's got a wicked sense of humor,
a lot of them were quite smutty and quite hilarious. Yeah,

(11:59):
and she did a Flexican as well where she was
making up words and coming up with new definitions of things.
So there's lots of different avenues of creativity that the
project brings out, and it's just that daily repetition of
a practice where by the end of it you don't
you don't really realize that you're going to get better
at whatever it is you're doing by the very nature

(12:21):
of repeating something. So yeah, it's a brilliant it's a
brilliant project. I love it, and I can say that
because I can't take responsibility for it because it started
with a guy in America I think at Yale, Michael Beirut,
who came up with it as a summer project for people.
So we've kind of just co opted it and have
been using it. But yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Don't know, Well, all credit to him, but equally, I've
seen the work that goes into what you do for
the exhibition and the stuff that's produced. It's phenomenal and
it's all under kind of your your guys and leadership.
So yeah, we're going to give you credit. I will
give you credit. If you will not give you a
cue credit I'm here to do.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
I will take I will take credit.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
That's yeah, but it's lovely to hear you speak about
it and the way you light up, And yeah, it
does make you think, like I think so much of
us neglect the little hobbies and pursuits that we love
as children and art. It's just such a massive one
of mine. And obviously we a will express ourselves in
different ways through different things through our lives. But yeah,
it's a nice reminder to go back and play as well.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
And I think the interesting thing is, I mean play
is I could we could spend an entire podcast talking
just about play and how important it is, and as
designers and creatives, we have to do that as part
of our process. So and it's kind of bashed out
of us by society and this kind of as we
grow up, people say to us, oh, you can't do that,
that's you know, that's childish. But it's like there's you know,

(13:38):
there's childlike and childish, and there's playful and and I
think we need to be careful not to sort of
add all all of that out of us, Like it's
so integral to who we are as a species. Like
I think I think I've found, certainly my experience was
art and design. We're always seen as additional subjects to

(13:59):
be added on, depended to things, rather than the subject itself.
And I mean we saw it during during the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
And literally.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
That was the thing.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
It's like, when so much stopped. Yeah, everybody relied on
the creative industries, whether that was through broadcasting, through television, film,
through art, through the you know, the kind of music, Yeah, music,
the kind of recording of the outdoors in creative ways,
whether it was people going out sketching or taking photographs

(14:30):
or and I and so much of our lives needed that,
And I think it's I think it's really it's doing
it a disservice when people just kind of plug it
into the side. And yeah, I think I think we
need to do more about that. And hopefully that's something
that I'm kind of teaching my students, that this is

(14:51):
an integral pursuit.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Wonderful. Have you found this is a bit of a
side question, I guess, but have you used art a
told to kind of help you through your own diagnosis
that you can think of whether it's I guess a
lot of it might be subconscious in that you're just
expressing yourself in a way, But is there anything that
you can pinpoint.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
In, Oh, what year was it. I think it might
have been quite soon after being diagnosed. I suddenly had
access to these bar graphs in or the graphs in
the libre data that I was getting, So every day
I was seeing this kind of line and.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
I kind of used drawing.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
So one of my projects, I think I only got
to about day twenty six and I lost it a
little bit because they're trying to run the project and
do my own work and everything of course that comes
with type one. I think it was the year that
I was diagnosed. It would have been the summer of
twenty twenty two following the diagnosis, and I was just like, no,
I can't this is it's too much. But there was
a couple of those days where I treated those graphs

(15:58):
rather than information about what my blood was doing, they
were kind of referencing what I was doing on the day.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
So there was one day that it was a bit
of a roller.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Coaster, but I just turned that into grass and drew
a tennis ball on it, and that was me out
in the park with my dog, And so I suppose
I tried, but I'm I think this is the thing.
I'm too much of a. I think I'm too much
of a designer and less of an artist, and that
a lot of what I do is about communicating information
rather than it just being for the sake of being

(16:25):
in a Yeah, so I haven't quite done it yet,
and I worry that maybe if I tried, it would
be a poor cousin to what Alex is doing, because
she's done it so well. So well, maybe see, it
might be it might be a little later, because I
was actually only yesterday said to my friend that I
need to inject more life into my life, and obviously
creativity is a huge part of that. So yeah, maybe

(16:49):
maybe this year.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Okay, Well, I enjoyed the little pun on inject there,
so seamlessly into talking about your diagnosis. Yeah, if you
don't mind sort of detailing, I guess I think you
had quite a long runway if I'm not yea shaken,

(17:12):
If you wouldn't mind talking to me about what happened
in the kind of weeks and months leading up to it.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Absolutely so. At the time, I was freelancing alongside being
a lecturer, so I was a sort of fractional member
of staff, So I was working half of my week
at the art college, and then I was kind of
subsidizing that with freelance work and running one hundred Dates
project alongside that. So through well, what year was, it

(17:39):
was twenty twenty one, so it was kind of we
were kind of in and out of lockdown. Still there
was still a bit of a weird hangover from the pandemic,
and when the kind of exhaustion started, I just assumed
that it was related to that, because when the first
lockdown happened in the March of twenty twenty, we got

(18:02):
like a week's notice at university from them closing and
then saying right, you had to teach online, and it
was kind of a quiplash from that, and we were
just all kind of running to try and keep delivering
these really practical, creative, community based things through a screen

(18:23):
where let's face it, most people kept their screens off
and kept themselves muted when you weren't talking, and so
it was, yeah, it was this kind of weird time.
So the hangover from the pandemic, I think I attributed
the tiredness to when it started coming. And also at
the time I'd been given the opportunity to do a

(18:45):
crowd funder for one hundred days, and they basically said,
if you'd put a crowdfunder together for a community engagement
kind of project, we'll match the funding through Creative Scotland,
so you could end up with essentially double the double
the income from that to help put on something. So
I was putting this mad application together.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
I had like four.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Weeks to do it, so I was doing working at university,
freelancing on other stuff, and then putting this bid together.
So I kind of got to the end of that
and I was again even more exhausted and just thought, oh,
I don't know what this is. And I remember going
on holiday with a set of friends and we were
trying to walk up a hill and I was just

(19:23):
exhausted and it was like my limbs were lead and
I was so thirsty, and I was so tired and
so emotional because I was just like, I'm this kind
of tired, unfit person spoiling my friend's holiday. So I
didn't allow myself any rest. So I would kind of
catch up with them and then keep going, and then
I had a bit of a panic attack on the

(19:43):
hill because I.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Was just like, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
And after that I went to the doctor. I was
like I'm starting to feel like there's something not quite right,
And of course phone doctor's appointments at that point because
it was lockdown, and because I was so emotional and tired.
I had experienced in the past kind of mental health issues,
issues with kind of depression and anxiety. I just presumed

(20:07):
it was that again because there were very familiar feelings,
and the doctor, I imagine, being utterly overwhelmed, just went,
you know yourself, you know your body. Let's just put
you back on what you were on before. And there
was a part of me that kind of rallied for
a couple of weeks because I felt like I'd taken
control and I was doing something about it. But then
we were still teaching online and I was just exhausted,

(20:32):
and we got to So that was kind of throughout
the summer, and we got to the end of October
of the twenty twenty one and I went to the
doctors in person. I said, no, I absolutely needed to
do a panel. I needed to do something. I needed
to check byroid whatever it might be, just something's not right.
And I got a phone call that evening and the

(20:55):
person who was forming the doctor on call, I was like,
are you feeling like you've got pains in your stomach,
are you? And he started describing some of the symptoms
of DK, and I immediately realized that he was talking
about DK when he said, your glucose is really high.
And I was like, ah, I've read Alex's post about this.
I know this sounds like DK. And I was like, no,

(21:16):
I'm I'm feeling awful because obviously that's why i got
my blood test one, but I'm not feeling in jeopardy.
And he was like, okay, so book an appointment with
your doctor and we'll speak about it. So I phoned
the doctor, weirdly, the same doctor that phoned Alex for
her diagnosis, my God, and went in to see her.

(21:37):
And the way that I found out that I had
diabetes is when she tested, obviously, the urine for the
key tones and she said, yeah, there's there's there's some
keytones in here, not very many, but there. We've got
a little tweak on the key tones. And I went, oh,
so it's so it's diabetes and she went, oh, you've
definitely got diabetes. It's just figuring out which type you've got.

(21:58):
And I was like, oh, that's a really nice way
of finding out I've got this lifelong condition, whatever it so,
And I don't think I mean, she's a wonderful doctor,
but I don't think she realized how abrupt that was.
So she couldn't get through to the unit at that point,
so sent me away and said would you be able
to come back to hospital appointment later? If I phoned

(22:18):
it was like yeah, So got a phone call like
an hour later. Please go up to your metabolic unit
at the Western General. Can you get there yourself? And
I said yeah, So drove up and as I was
parking the car and putting my ringo in, I texted
Alex and said, by the way, if you need anyone
to trust test drive your companion card's idea that you've got,
I'm just going in for what will probably be a diagnosis,

(22:40):
so let me know.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
And yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Essentially sat in this room with again a lovely consultant
and a brilliant DSN who tested my blood, tested my
key tones, and obviously kind of took my history and
they when somebody sort of asks you to list things out,
you all of a sudden realize all of these things
that you've been kind of justifying as something else. It

(23:06):
was when they were asking my familial history that I
started going, oh, well, actually, my great uncle died in
a diabetic coma when he was nineteen.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
And when I kind.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Of said this to the doctor, he was like, actually,
that's not a close enough link for that to be
a kind of obvious precursor to the condition.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
I was like, right, okay.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Was like, my dad got an autoimmune condition when he
was in his forties. It was kind of like a
stressed induced thing, but his was more neurological. I think
it's called CIDP chronic inflammatory polyradial neuropathy. I've probably done
that completely wrong, but mad thing where you lose kind
of feeling in your body. Thankfully, he's absolutely fine now.

(23:50):
But when I'd said about him having an autoimmune condition,
I was like, I kind of follow my father's side
of my genetics. He said, it's more than likely. We're
going to do the tests, so we're going to figure
out if there's antibodies in there, but we have to
kind of build into the thought here that it might
be type two or it might be type one. I

(24:11):
think it's type one. But and then he asked me
the weirdest question. He said, which one would you prefer, like, Oh,
can you get a choice? I was like, I wasn't
aware that one got to choose what chronic condition they wanted.
And it was kind of echoed later when they sent
me away from the hospital point with the kind of
bag of stuff. But they sent me away with the
brochure the information book clip for type one and the

(24:35):
information booklet for type two.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
How did they determine that it was type one?

Speaker 2 (24:39):
So they did antibody tests. There was three different tests
that they did, and I can't remember what they're called now,
but there was one in particular that was quite a
new antibody test, and they had things like a kind
of normal range is like five, and I was like
one hundred and something, and then the other one was
like the normal range is like between seven and ten,

(24:59):
and I was like one hundred and seventy or something.
So it's like there were so many antibodies in my system,
and I think when I started to backtrack, i'd actually
been on well for maybe about five or six months
before that that the first kind of symptoms had started coming,
but it was such a slow role that actually my
blood glucose was twenty two when I was diagnosed so

(25:21):
I was lucky in the sense that I didn't go
into DK, I didn't need to be in hospital, but
it did mean that due to kind of lockdown and
so on, the Lovely Gale my DSN taught me how
to inject, gave me some advice, gave me the all
important if you're going to have a bottle of wine,
have a chippy afterwards advice, which was very important, and

(25:41):
then just kind of sent me on my way and
I didn't see another consultant for almost a year after that. Wow,
so I was just kind of on my own. So, yeah,
it was whiplash was quite incredible.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, I think you've raised a really good way piece
of awareness there about that slow creep. I think that
does occur when you're in a busy adult life. You know,
there are days where you just don't feel great, and
like piecing that together backwards is obviously twenty twenty, but yeah,
you know, with the instances of adult diagnosis increasing, I

(26:17):
think that's going to be a common experience for people.
But my goodness, me, what a lot to take on.
You know, you've got this one brochure, but it's not
like that's kind of that's the textbook way of doing
teitewe diabetes Off you go, that's absolutely wild.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
But the interesting thing was that, and I do wonder
if part of it is the more the more kind
of and this is going to sound terrible, so I'm
probably being quite clumsy with my words, but almost like
the more competently you're able to speak about a condition,
people assume you're okay. And I think in the diagnosis
with the consultant, who weirdly was somebody that Alex was

(26:54):
speaking with for her project as well, so it's so intertwined.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
He when he was.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Talking about rates and bulleting and things, I knew what
he was talking about because of diabetes by design, and
so he was able to shortcut maybe some of the
explanations because I would speak back to him when he
would say what it is, I go, oh, is that
you mean? And he's like, oh yeah, So we kind
of fast forwarded through that. And I think it's happened
as well that any time I've spoken to any of

(27:20):
my healthcare team, which I must underline, have been brilliant
the entire time, albeit that I don't see them as
regularly as I would like, They've always been been great
they always they look at my figures and they go, oh,
you're doing You're doing brilliantly.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
It's like that at what costs?

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Like everywhere else? Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, there's so
much in that isn't there? And I, as you say,
like the care teams are brilliant and everyone is doing
their best and all of those things. But yeah, like
these numbers, I've had good numbers, and I've you know,
I've I've been running myself absolutely ragged to get there,
and it's like, where's the where's the balance? And particularly

(28:00):
you know, for the best one in the world, you
probably did have more knowledge than most, but living with
it is such a different thing. So how did you
find that having then just being sort of sent back
out into the world and having to go straight into
the you know, get a practice. Do you on this comes? Well?

Speaker 2 (28:19):
I think I am I kind of this is going
to again it's going to sound a bit bizarre, but
I kind of treated it like a new hobby and
I think I just and I don't know whether it's
this is why. I don't know if it's my personality
is kind of like this because I'm now in academia.
This is the way that my brain works, or whether
I'm and in academia, because this is the way that
my brain works. But I I just was like, right,

(28:42):
I'm going to learn everything I possibly can learn about this,
knowing that I do not have a scientific mind, but
I was like, I'm going to learn what I need
to to understand this condition, and then maybe I can
understand it better about how it's affecting me.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
And I think.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
I have lived blissfully ignorant about a lot of my
body for a lot of years, like I often have
felt maybe a little bit disconnected from it, like I
wasn't really aware of what was going on. And I
think I was really lucky that when I was diagnosed,
I've not really gone through a phase of anger about it.

(29:17):
I'm not really angry about it. I'm sad about it
because of the impact that it's had on my life
so far and the impact that it will continue to
have on my life. And sometimes I can kind of
that gets a little bit to the top, but in
the majority, I'm just so bloody grateful that the rest
of my body is doing what it's supposed to you. Because, again,

(29:37):
a bit of information that I learned from one of
the posters was only two percent of my pancreas is
actually not working. Like I can't hate on my pancreas
too much because it's still doing other things, but like
that just two percent has had such a profound impact,
Like what other miraculous things or is my body doing?
And I've got no idea about it. And on top

(30:00):
of that, I've been actively you know, like through not
sleeping and drinking like a sailor in my twenties, like
and I'm not lying thirties and forties as well, but
like those sorts of things now over, I'm like, oh
my god, I can see instantly the effect that having
a coffee or not having a good night sleep or
not hydrating enough has on one aspect of my health.

(30:24):
It makes me go, oh, my goodness, like all of
the things that I could have been doing or should
have been doing before. It's kind of bonkers.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, I still find that quite hard to wrap my
head around. I'm completely I didn't obviously get to that
point for a long time, but certainly now as someone
who pushes their body quite a lot, does a lot
of things, like you know, similar to you juggling things,
And I think, God, the amount of work that this
is just these this two percent of one organ like
you say, like the rest of my body is actually phenomenal,

(30:56):
Like yeah, And I think it's only because we have
this acute awareness of what we've not got that we
can appreciate them the things that we do have. But
it's to then be faced with like I hate this
some days and I really don't want to do this today,
and like, will you just please behave like to kind
of flip flop between. I don't know if that's something
that you've kind of grappled with.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, Well, I think because of the you know, on
the vein of I'm going to treat this like a
new hobby, I'm going to learn everything I possibly can,
and that included binging wonderful podcasts like yourself, and I
was also through listening to you introduced to Owen Costello
on the Sloan podcast, who listened a lot to them.
I say them because him and Graham's chat absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
But I.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Think what I ended up doing was thinking too much
about it, and I gave it too much of my brain,
and I wanted too much to be in control of it.
And of course, as we know there's certain things that
I can do, but there's so many more things that
are completely out with my control. And even when I

(32:04):
do all of the things I can control, it still
will jump up and hit me in the face and go, no,
that's that's not going to work, or oh you forgot
this one of the kind of forty two things that
can go wrong. So yeah, I think I let it
take up too much of my brain. But going back
to the wonderful health team that I happen to have

(32:25):
is we have a psychologist on the staff in the
metabolic unit in the Western General at Edinburgh. In Edinburgh,
and because of the impact that it was having, I
spoke to one of my dsn's and I was like,
I wonder if you've got anyone that I can speak to.
And I was expecting to be on a waiting list
for months and months and months before I'd be able
to speak to anyone. And I don't know, I don't

(32:48):
know what then, Maybe just became a gap in the
calendar at the right time, but I managed to see
someone quite quickly, and I was speaking to somebody for
on and off and not incredibly regularly.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
It was kind of to start with it was about
every two weeks for a.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Couple of months, and then it moved to monthly, and
then it was three monthly. But it was about a
year and a bit that I spoke to somebody and
just the act of saying out loud to somebody who
worked in that area, you know how difficult it is
on some days, how like some days it takes one

(33:23):
hundred percent of my brain, let alone fifty percent of
it to remember to do all the things you have
to remember or not be so unimaginably annoyed that you
can't go to bed early because you have to take
your background in sland at a certain time, or falling
asleep on the sofa. I'm waking up at three in
the morning and going, yeah, okay, I'm going to have
to work that back over the next few days to

(33:43):
get myself level. And so I think, yeah, they were
really useful for helping work through some of that, but
equally things like hearing you and your podcast say time
and happiness as well as time and range, like ah,
that was a penny dropping moment because I was chasing

(34:04):
that green all the time and wanting to see my
figures being as high as they could be. Because I'm
an overachiever and realizing that I was still there was
still loads that I could sit within to be able
to have a good time while I was doing it
and not take it so seriously. But it's also like,

(34:28):
how do you not take something seriously that could literally
kill you if you do it wrong? You know, But
it's just, yeah, it's so full of contradictions and it's
so infuriating truly.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
And at the same time, it's like we're still doing
the thing, like I've still got my job and I
just need to shout out comil nedabetic for the time
and happiness thing. I have to credit him for coming
up with that, because I do think it is it
isn't just about the numbers as much as we want
them to be arranged. But I spoke to my consultant
at one point and he was like, you know that

(35:06):
me sat here, as a person without type one diabetes
is not one hundred percent in your range ever, And
I was like, ahh yeah. This episode of Type one
on one is sponsored by dexcom. Using DEXCOMCGM has given
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(35:27):
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(35:48):
free Dexcom one plus sample. Always read the user manual
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What did you find like the most frustrating in terms
of you said, they're like these little day to day
things because there's obviously the testing and the dosing and

(36:09):
the very medical side of things, which you know you
are taught about, but all these extra layers on top, Like,
was there anything in particular where you were like, well,
that's very different to what it looked like before, just
in terms of like having that adult diagnosis and the
very memorable before and after versus you know, I can't
really remember. Yeah for it.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, I thought it's an interesting one, isn't it, Because
I think there's been a few conversations that I've born
witness to either on podcasts or that I've had with
friends about the would it be better to be diagnosed
as a young person and then that's the majority of
your life, you.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Know that thing?

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Or would it be better to have had all of
those kind of go through the difficult times like puberty
and stuff like that and then be diagnosed? And I
suppose the point, really important point is we don't know
any better, and we could never know any better or
different should I say so? But I think there's it's

(37:11):
cast such a different tone on so many things, but
yet some days don't feel that different at all. That
I sometimes find that I'm being kind of melodramatic about it,
because actually the impact of it is I just have
to remember a few more things than I did before,
and I think a lot of the changes that I've

(37:33):
had to make are actually quite positive ones. And so
without kind of wanting to be too positive about it,
because I remember in diagnosis the doctor had said, you know,
a lot of type one diabetics find that they are
healthier as a result of the diagnosis than they were before,
and I'm like, hmm, yeah, but and then you know,
a few years down the line, I'm here going, well, actually,

(37:57):
I quit drinking about a year ago, and that wasn't
just because of diabetes, but it was a little bit
of a maybe I should start respecting the other organs
unless I want to maybe start doing the job of
those as well. So I think on the day to day, yes,
there's that turn of things that we have to do.

(38:21):
I think I do less in my life than I
used to, and I think I need to do a
bit of work to find the balance within that, because
I think what I've done is I've removed a lot
of the me because there's the dutiful stuff that I
have to do. So you know, I'm fully employed with
the University of Edinburgh. Now you know that's me full time,

(38:43):
so I don't have to do the freelance anymore, which
is great on one hand because I don't have to
worry about that income and kind of churning for work.
But also what I realized in that first year after
diagnosis is I was using just my freelance time to
deal with the impact of diabetes. So any days that

(39:04):
I was, you know, recovering from kind of like three
days of highs overnight or you know, three days at
work with hypos because I hadn't quite understood how much
I was going to be running around, and then the
latter two days of the week where I wasn't at UNI,
I was basically recovering from you know, like a T
one D hangover. But I would use my freelance days

(39:26):
because I wasn't accountable to anyone but me. But then,
of course that was having a financial impact as well
as also probably giving my employer, you know, not really
a good indication of some of that flexibility and reasonable
adjustment that I might need. So then when I went
kind of later on and said, actually I'm going full

(39:47):
time but now you know, which is great from a
financial benefit, it's fantastics. It means I don't have that
sort of precariousness that US freelancers can sometimes have. There
is also the flip side of that in that you
now have to do the reasonable adjustments that I was
previously doing for myself. And thankfully, working in academia, I've
got a certain amount of autonomy and I you know,

(40:09):
I'm in charge of my time apart from the timetable time,
I can kind of work things around. But yeah, it did,
it was it proved challenging. I think previously One of
the big changes was I used to liberally skip meals
or push things back, or you know, not get up
early enough to have breakfast and all those sorts of things,

(40:31):
and my diabetes very quickly showed me what kind of
effect that was having on my body. So yeah, I
think I think they've been small and big changes. Sometimes
I don't feel any of them, and it's just this
thing that comes around with me, and then other days
it's like, oh, everything's different.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, Wow, there's so much in there. I feel like
I could just speak to you for days. Honestly. Yeah,
because I've often said when I say, oh, I'm freelance,
it's often with the caveat of like that's a luxury
I have because my time is mine. But you're so right,
like the pressure that comes with that, and then the
kind of not like if I attend medical appointments or
I need a day off because Type one has hit

(41:16):
me over the head, like you know that's income gone
or yeah, et cetera. That you know that all of
this is like six of one and half a dozen
of the other, of course, but I know, it's just
interesting to hear you articulate it there that dealing with
the impact of things that you mentioned. Have you found
that that's got less as you've moved through and maybe

(41:36):
understood a bit more about how your body works and
just got used to what the condition entails in general,
or do you think it's still something that kind of
keeps you guessing. I guess, well, I suppose this.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Is probably a good time to mention actually the kind
of self advocacy I did a year ago, almost to
the day actually, after chatting with you and at the
Q and A at the Diabetes by Design festival that
we had, and you were telling the story about changing insulin,
and I'd kind of put my hand up like a
keen bean from the front row and asked how you

(42:10):
did that. I, in one of my meetings with my
psychologist had said, you know, I, I see the consultant
for so little time, and it's often quite frustrating because
the consultant I'm seeing is a different consultant each time,
because they work as a team and you get rotated.
So I've not seen the same doctor more than once,
and there's normally a tickbox that we have to go through,

(42:33):
and I kind of lose my voice in some of
those circumstances and I or I get told I'm doing
a great job, and then it feels weird to ask
a question. And I wasn't sure how to do it,
and so when I asked the question, she was like, well,
let's rehearse. What do you want to say? And I
of course reeled off this bloody, lovely eloquent thing and
she was like to say, that's fine, and I was like, yes,
but this is different. But she wrote it on a

(42:55):
postcard for like a post it note for me, and
I went into my appointment weirdly the next day, so
they'd kind of a butted against each other, and I
kind of had my post it note and I was ready,
like I'm going to say this, and I'm going to
ask to be changed from Nova Rapid to the ASP,
and I'm going to ask about my background insulin, about
about splitting it, and I'm going to ask about being

(43:16):
put on a pump. And that was my list and
the consultant that I got that day, and I really
wish I could remember her name, which is terrible, because
she was brilliant. She was the most engaged. She asked
so many questions. She listened to me when I was
talking about my management. We had really intelligent conversation about
the reason why I'm making those decisions that on the firsthand,

(43:37):
she went, oh, why are you doing that? And it
looks on here like you're stacking your insulin And I'm like, well,
because this is the reality of living with an insulin
that doesn't work for forty five minutes, Like I can't
dose for a whole meal because then it all hits
it one blah blah blah. So we had these conversations
and she listened to me rather than telling me what
I needed to do. And after that she was like,

(43:58):
I'll go and speak to the main consultant and we'll
ask about these three things. But she'd actually brought up
being on a pump first and said I was a
good candidate, so put me on a list. She went
away and asked saying, not many people change their insulin,
but you know, so managing my expectations. But came back
and saying, yep, let's do that. And it was just
one of the best experiences because I was listening to

(44:22):
I asked for what I needed, and I was given
what I was needed in an informed and sort of
good way. And so so many of those things and
impact that I was feeling from diabetes shifted because Nova
Rapid works brilliantly for so many people, but I hadn't
realized how much it was not working for me. So

(44:45):
the routines that I used to fight to try and
get and couldn't really manage because I love my sleep
more than my breakfast and those sorts of things. When
I'd been trying to struggle with that with Nova Rapid
and having food to floor, so waking up already, you know,
getting high as soon as I woke up, Trying then
to wake up early enough to take over Rapids that

(45:07):
then I could wait an hour before I could eat.
It just wasn't working. Whereas now with fi ASP, I've
rediscovered apples because I did three years almost without apples
because they're just a little sugar.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Bomb for me.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
So if I wanted an apple, I would have to
take an over Rapid and then wait like forty five
minutes to an hour before I could eat the apple,
and I would still get a spike. And I know
we will always see our blood go up and down,
but I the spikes were quite high, and I feel
the hyper quite alone.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
That's not nice. Is it on that kind of pressure.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yeah, And because so much of my time is spent
trying to be really patient with students, being in hyper
is just not conducive for being a patient lecturer with
young folk.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
It just doesn't.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
So, yeah, the switch to fi ASP has opened up
a whole new routine for me. So I'm able to
get up in the morning. My little lazy little dog
sleeps on the bed until I've finished eating my breakfast
and have my coffee, and then we go out for
a walk, so that sorts out my ten minute walk afterwards.
And I'm actually able to, apart from a couple of

(46:23):
summer hypos where I've kind of misjudged the heat or
misjudged the length of the walk and I've not been
able to drive into work, I've managed to get into
this really nice kind of morning morning routine. But yeah,
the switch to FIESP has literally been, without being kind
of hyperbolic, it's been life changing.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Wow, I'm just beaming these little things that apple Like
that's so demonstrative of something that seemingly nothing to an
outside eye, but like these pleasures in life, these simple things,
just being able to get up at the time that
you want to get up and have that time enjoy
your breakfast without just being like, well, I'm gonna be
titled day now because I have to get up at
five am just to wait for these things to watch whatever.

(47:06):
Like I'm being hyperbolic there, but being able to go
into that appointment. And I love that tip about having
the post it now. Oh yeah, the thing's written down
of what you want to say. That's very helpful.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
And interestingly I didn't actually need to use it, but
just having it meant that I knew I could look
at it if I needed to. And actually, as you know, Jess,
my lovely psychologist, knew I was able to articulate that
I would have been able to articulate that even without
her help. But actually I wasn't aware of that. I
didn't realize that I could just sit down and say

(47:39):
I know myself really well now, like I have a
surprising knowledge of my body and this condition. And to
the point, for I've got my appointment next week with
my consultant, and I'm kind of ready for a bit
of a fight because I'm quite an intuitive doser. I'm
still on MDI still using my fi ASP and my

(48:00):
Atlantis overnight.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
But I do.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
I stack insulin, which is not medically recommended. But I
think that is by people who aren't type one diabet
diabetics and don't understand that when you're living with this,
you don't know that you're going to have a sticky
toffee pudding when you start your meal. So of course
I'm going to have to dose for that later, and
of course it's going to be in the same you know,
time that the first dose is working on.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
But I'm not going to not.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Have the sticky toffy pudding it if I'm in a
fancy restaurant. So yeah, I think I think it's that
confidence to know that as much as medical professionals are
wonderful and thank goodness for the NHS, as much as
they know, unless they're living with the condition or living

(48:49):
so adjacent to the condition that they have that intimate
awareness like their sibling or their parents or or kids
have them live with type one diabetes, then yeah, I
know my body better. And I don't think I'd ever
have been able to say that four years ago I
know my body well. I just don't think it would
have come out of my mouth, whereas now I know

(49:11):
my body and it still surprises me that I can
feel something coming, because some days I can't. Some days
I have moments and I'm like it jumps up and
smacks me in the face and I'm like, Wow, that
came out of nowhere. But other times I'm like checking
my phone before the alarms go off, and that always
makes me go, I do know you?

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah, And I think as well, like when I've gone
in with a more more of an idea about what
I want from the appointment. More often these days, for sure,
like it has been met with quite a collaborative mindset, like, Okay,
let's figure out a way that this works, Like let's
work together. Yeah, the expertise alongside the intuition and being

(49:56):
the person living with the thing. Yeah, I think that's
really hopeful. Do you feel like it empowered you beyond
in other ways?

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:05):
It has actually because since then, and again this is
probably something that we could do a whole other podcast on,
But since then, I went back to my GP and
started the conversation about the big pedimenopause, which of course
is a whole other jettle of fish really for women

(50:26):
of a certain age, and I, because of my experience
dealing with my diabetes team, and the fact that actually
going in armed with information is positive and if it
is met with that collaborative approach is welcome. So when
I started kind of putting two and two together as

(50:47):
to why I was feeling some of the things that
I was feeling, because of course, we have a tendency
to just well, I'm not going to lump everybody, and
I have a tendency now if I'm feeling something, my
brain immediately goes to that's a type one thing. I'm
feeling this because maybe there's something that I'm not aware of,
and I think it's just because I'm hyper vigilant about that.
But of course of these other things that were happening,

(51:09):
and I realized that it was maybe that start of
the hormones starting to do their thing and my body
starting to go through its next phase. So I printed
out the nice guidelines, this nice kind of summary guidelines
for dealing with women that are about to go through menopause,

(51:29):
and I went in armed to speak to my GP,
my very lovely GP, who I pretty much knew would
be okay with just seeing what we could do to
treat in these symptoms that I was feeling. But I thought,
I'm going to go in armed with the knowledge that they,
as a GP service have to provide this basic approach
to somebody who walks in and says, I know my

(51:51):
body something as different. Can we have a conversation about
HRT And she didn't need me to bring out the
nice guidelines and we had a lovely conversation, and she
suggested that I started HRT and I've been too chicken
to try it because as we know, I say we know.
I didn't know for such a long time that insulin

(52:12):
was a hormone until I became a part of this
type one diabetes world. And of course when my body started,
when I started kind of putting two and two together
about hormones and the fluctuations, and of course the impact
that menstruation has on my dosing levels. So I'm a
different ratio in the period coming up to the bleeding,

(52:33):
starting in the menstruation cycle. So now I was like, right, okay,
what's going to happen when I introduce estrogen? And I
introduced estrogen and progesterone. If it's already fluctuating, how am
I going to deal with that? And so I kind
of sat with the patches not doing anything, just kind
of winking at me every now and again. I'm like, oh,
so I literally started. I'm on my second patch, and

(52:57):
I have had more hypos in the last week than
I've had.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
In a really long time.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Kind of interesting back to back to back. And so
part of me is like, because I'm starting I think
another phase of honeymoon retreat, because I was in honeymoon
phase probably for about.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Under a year.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
And kind of just started upping my background when I
realized that there was changes on the advice of my
DSN and they were just like, next time you need
to up it, let us know. But I just kind
of just went on my own and just knew my
body and figured it out. But I got up to
the original dose that they'd put me on. But recently
I've started to tweak and go up a little bit more,

(53:43):
and I think basically me tweaking my background and putting
the HRT patches on at the same time has created
a kind of perfect storm of maybe a little bit
too much background and then estrogen, which of course is
when the ratios you're kind of more insulin sensitive rather
than less in the whole cycle. So yeah, I have

(54:03):
been bumping off the bottom all week.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, you know so much. I'm just sat here like, Wow,
it's incredible to me that you've taken this on in
this way, and I know you're sort of saying that, like,
you know, I had this hyper week. How do you
deal with these bumps? Like you've said you didn't feel angry?
I mean, what's your kind of relationship to the word acceptance,

(54:29):
I guess is what I'm trying to ask.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
It's a tricky one because I I as a as
a person, anger is not really something that I do
very often, to the point where it kind of surprises
me when I get angry, and to the point where
when I'm grumpy with people, it's really noticeable because it's
and it doesn't happen that often. I think it's happened
a lot more since living with Type one diabetes. I'm

(54:57):
not gonna lie, because there's been a lot of either
hypo or hyper emotions attached to it, or just tired,
decision fatigue kind of stuff coming in there. So I
think I have been more emotionally active, shall we say,
But I think I accepted it quite quickly, and I

(55:19):
think a lot of that had to do with there
being so many examples of people out in the world
living great lives with it that.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
You know, there wasn't.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
The sadness of the unknown, like this is the end
of something as I know it. It's just like, well,
this is just shifting into a different gear. I'm going
to have to prioritize different things. And so I think
acceptance came quite quickly. And that's not to say that
I'm happy with it, because there's still days where I
get really sad about the fact that I'm having to

(55:51):
inject myself every single day and I you know, the
background and sul And it's funny because as I.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Go through the day, the boluses there's they're.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Kind of just I do that, but the background because
I have to make such a concerted effort to remember,
because they're not attached to an action like eating or
you know, having a coffee or thinking about something else
that's happening alongside that. And because I I hate I
hate going to bed early. It's it's something I need

(56:23):
to sort out. But because of that, I'm never in
the same place when I'm doing my background. It's not
like every single night I'm going to bed at the
same time, and I'm taking my background and it's attached
to that routine. So that's normally when I get a
bit sad, it's like, oh, I'm never just going to
be able to have a care free evening where I
don't do this, But they're they're less often, which is

(56:45):
which is good.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah, And with that, how are you feeling sort of
going into this new a new chapter, new evolution into
the into the perimenopause starting HRT alongside diabetes, Like, how
just because I know that so many women are going
through it and there's just not that much research out
there and there's not that much information out there, and

(57:06):
there are some incredible people making changes to that. But yeah,
just for other listeners who might be going into the
same phase of life, i'd love to hate. Hey, how
you're feeling?

Speaker 3 (57:17):
So I am.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
I'm incredibly lucky that I have some really, really good
friends in my sort of support network. One of my
friends who so my beloved pal from university, Alexis. She
is a born researcher, so I kind of learn all

(57:39):
the things I need to know about perimenopause from her
because she kind of hit it well, it kind of
hit her like a bus actually a few years back.
But she is so exceptionally good at researching and has
had to advocate for herself so much in a health
space that there are so many things that I've managed
to learn from her that again, I went in to

(58:00):
appointments or I went into research already knowing some of
it because she'd had to battle some of those things.
So the whole shared experience is so important, and that's
why things like your podcast is so important, or seeing
other people that are speaking about their lived experience or

(58:20):
sharing their medical knowledge about these things is so important.
So I've been seeking out different places and podcasts and
information streams about menopause and perimenopause, and I'm trying to
avoid the kind of commercializing of perimenopause it's been happening
because it has turned into it feels a little bit

(58:41):
like it's turning into that same space that the kind
of health and wellbeing space has turned into. It's like, oh,
we can just make money off this because half the
population is going to go through this. It's like, oh,
how about you put money into doing really good research.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Yeah, we're not going to research it or fix it.
We're just going to charge you we're.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Just going to charge you for it and tell you, yeah,
we're going to tell you that everything that you think's
wrong with you now is because of the perimenopause, and
then we're going to sell you this supplement. And it's like,
how about we do research, we figure out what happens
to our miraculous bodies. But I think what I need
to do is maybe grab on to some of this
healthy female rage that's probably going to bubble up in

(59:18):
my hormones and use it to just figure out what
I need, dispense with the stuff that I don't, and
just keep advocating for myself. And I think I can
do that because I've got powerful women next to me
who have either already done it or are doing it.
And I think it's probably just about making sure that

(59:39):
I talk to people loudly about what it is that
we're going through, because I think asking my mum about
the process that she went through at perimenopause, she doesn't
remember a.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Lot of it.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
She was very stoic about it. She just kind of
got on with it. She kind of describes it as
she got hot and stuck there for a while. But
I know that there would have been so many more
complex things happening that she just didn't have any avenue
to talk about, like nobody talked about it, whereas I'm like,
let me tell you about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
So. Yeah, I mean the way you speak there if
you take menopause out and put diabetes in, Like, it's
how like your approach to this in terms of I
need to go find the information for myself and I
need to discard what isn't going to hit or isn't
going to connect, and then be discerning as well as
being in tune with your own body to then go

(01:00:34):
and ask the questions and advocate for what you need. Like, yeah,
that's a potent recipe for hopefully kind of moving through
these different chapters as they come through, whether that's pregnancy
or menopause or diagnoses or other things that really turn
our worlds upside down. And yeah, I think that's profound

(01:00:55):
but also super practical. Yeah, so cud it to you
for I mean, maybe it's just being powerful women surrounded
by powerful women and yeah, I love that too, like
the power of friendship, speaking of support and having people
around you. I'm just wondering if I can quickly ask
you about how you've like through the lens of an
adult diagnosis and someone who is very independent, busy running

(01:01:18):
their life and a job that they love and all
these extra hobbies and friendships and everything else. How you
have found articulating it to your loved ones people around you,
and also whether you've found yourself a bit more vulnerable
in terms of asking for help or like, what's that
kind of been? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
It's a really interesting one because I I'm a bit
of an oversharer, so I've never not told anyone how
I'm feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
In the moment. Really.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
I first of all, I have a really supportive family.
My sister lives about ten fifteen minutes walk away from me,
so she's really close. My parents are only about an
hour away from me, and as a family, we're really
close and we openly tell each other, like medical stuff
going on with her body. One might say we overshare.
So that's been really good. But where And there's kind

(01:02:12):
of two tones within my family. So my sister is
an incredible kind of diabetes ally now, she works in
a cafe where she's like a meer cat. When an
alarm goes off, she'll wait and see what the person's doing,
and then if they come up to ask for anything.
She's like, do you want me to measure the orange
juice for you? So she's like help, I know, helping

(01:02:33):
them because she understands, or you know, like she'll tell
them what carbs are in something, if she's spotted that
the libra's on, or like they've got a CGM or
she's spotted a pumper, you know, so she kind of
tries to help. I know, it's wonderful. So when she
when she cooks dinner for me, she'll be like, there's
this many carbs in it. And I'm like, okay, is
that for the whole meal or the half of meal?

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
And she's like, oh right, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
So she's like actively trying to kind of do that,
and my my mum, bless her. She's she's wonderful. She
did again for our stocking. She'd give us chocolate and
she'd put on like the carb content of one Ferrero rache.
She's stuck it on with a bit of sellotape.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Oh my goodness, me, I'm going to cry.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
She's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
But then also there's an aspect where my mum doesn't
know what happens when my alarm goes off. She hasn't
been able to differentiate the two different alarms. So when
my hype alarm goes off, the first thing she says,
it's what do you need to do?

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
And I'm so.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Looking forward to the companion cards coming out because I
think that my mum's such a visual learner and it's
such kind of bites of information that I think she'll
be able to get that because she's managed to convince
herself that it's too much and it's too much for
her to learn about, whereas actually I think, yeah, if
there's just ways of getting small bits of information that

(01:03:49):
they are, they're keen.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
To know, and they're very understanding.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
And I think the first time I bit somebody's head
off when I had a low, they were very understanding.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Of the fact that it was just a shaky hypo moment.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
But yeah, I think I've still had friends that have
made kind of jokes that have hit a little bit,
and but I've just told them don't do that. And
some people have gone, oh, oh no, you're absolutely right,
that wasn't what I should do. And so the people
that matter have adjusted kind of some of that stuff

(01:04:26):
that you know, it falls, and I'm sure that at
some point I've said something in the past about sugar
and diabetes without realizing how hurtful it might be, So
you know, it's it will happen. But I think it's
about when when I've pointed things out that would be
helpful or that are unhelpful, people have either done those

(01:04:47):
helpful things or started to adjust the things that might
be seen as unhelpful that which is good.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, And you mentioned right at the beginning that
you know, you're quite proud to kind of prioritizing your
needs to make sure you meet everyone else's needs. Has
titewe diabetes put a different slant on that at all,
in the sense of you kind of have to step
up to you our needs or what diabetes is screaming
at you? Has that? Has that relationship adapted to tour

(01:05:16):
as anything? Has diabetes taught you anything about yourself? I
guess that maybe you went going to give yourself credit
for before.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, I mean there's a few things that diabetes has
taught me. The deferral of pleasure was one that Nova
Rapid definitely taught me that being patient and waiting, But
from an kind of advocating perspective or putting myself first perspective. Yeah,
it has it has been. I'm much more capable of

(01:05:45):
saying Noah's a full sentence now. But I used to
be so super busy, and I think the pandemic kind
of it stripped out some stuff. But I I think
I've maybe stripped out too much, So I'm starting to
push that back in. I'm starting to kind of make

(01:06:06):
some more space for myself, and I think it's about
realizing that in the same way that the decisions that
I make are mine to make and I've got I'm
kind of trying to change the language that I use,
knowing that language is really important, and I've done that
a lot with Type one diabetes and not calling myself

(01:06:26):
a diabetic is one of them. But with language, it's
things like, instead of I don't have the time, I'm
not making the time for that, And then that has
such power because you're like, why am I not making
the time for that? Surely I can, and sometimes making
time is lying on the sofa and watching the Telly.
But if I want to start doing those crazy creative

(01:06:48):
things that I used to do, I need to make
that I need to put in as much effort into
that as the other things. So, yeah, I maybe need
to shift some of my diabetes' brain over a little
bit to me and try and make more space for
life in my life. As I was saying, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Yeah, life in your life. But I think, you know,
to give you credit, type one diabetes does come crashing
in and there is so much to learn and you
have to do it the minute you get up. You
don't get a choice to kind of push it to
the side today to pay attention to something else. So
still so new as well to say that you're at
this point where you're advocating for yourself and you're in

(01:07:27):
tune with your body, like to give you credit, that
is phenomenal, you know, not I hope I'm not patronizing
you there, but it sounds like there's may like because
type one diabetes there's an understanding of it in where
you're at that maybe there is more room for the
life to come back in the life and the life.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah, I think so. I think it's you know, me
and Alex. And I'm so glad to have Alex so
close as well because she lives in lethalso so I'm like, okay,
ten to fifteen minute walk away from her and so
we're kind of always sending each other the text message
that nobody else would understand that says that, oh my god,
I had this raging thing happen, like I had this

(01:08:08):
terrible hypo or isn't this a silly thing to have done?
Or isn't this frustrating and annoying? And being able to
just shout that into a space where you know there's
going to be no judgment and somebody understands is so important,
because I think you know it's such a ludicrous condition
that you know it goes from boring, mundane trudge trudging

(01:08:31):
through the daily nonsense to like life threatening at either end.
And but I can eat sweets or drink orange juice
and I'm fine like it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Then your celebrating winds, like being able to eat an
apple exists the best thing in the world, exactly like
there was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
We might be out of time to tell this story.
But I was in a meeting and somebody put apples
on the table and I was It was within my
first week of fi ASP, and I was like, yes,
I will have an apple, and I injected myself and
four minutes later I ate an apple and I was like,
that is life. Changing, and somebody that was in the
meeting with me was like that. I was like, that
might seem a little bit dramatic, because I suddenly was

(01:09:11):
aware of people without the context might not understand it.
And somebody in the meeting echoed that back to me,
and then I thought, you know what, Actually it's not
and I said, well, previously I couldn't have done that.
And I was speaking to my colleague about it afterwards,
and he was like, I bet if somebody sitting next
to him who had a prosthetic had said I've got

(01:09:31):
this new prosthetic and it's life changing, they wouldn't have
diminished that. But the fact that this minuscule dose of
drugs had allowed me to eat a fruit that I
love that I hadn't eaten for three years, that is
life changing. That is there's nothing dramatic about that. That's amazing.

(01:09:52):
So yeah, I think I need to just keep advocating.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Oh, I just love it. I feel like I've had
a hug for an hour. I feel so topped up.
And when I was writing to you about the FIASP situation,
it auto corrected. You noticed I didn't fiasco and FISP
has been anything but for you within this fiasco that
is type one diabetes. So yeah, just thank you so

(01:10:17):
much for sharing your insight and your kind of I
love the way you think and this kind of creative
approach as well, Like it's beautiful and I'm sorry you've
had to go through all this, but yeah, what a
beautiful conversation. Can you tell people where to find you,
where to find your art, where to find the projects?
I can't say hi and get a virtual hug?

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Absolutely so my Instagram handle. I might get it wrong.
I think it's Eila underscore creative. But you'll also be
able to find me through the at one hundred days
Project Scotland on Instagram because I'm tagged in all of
the stuff in there. So send me anything a DM
on either of those and it comes through to me.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Wonderful. Is that anything else you'd like to add?

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Just to be honest, just to thank you to you
without being I know, without being too sort of soppy
about it, but genuinely, you are doing such an amazing
thing by putting this podcast in your newsletters out like
it's just so important to hear those things said out
loud by people who are experiencing all avenues and aspects

(01:11:26):
of this and yeah, I think it's just so important.
So I am so excited that I'm a part of
that conversation now that I can't tell you, so just yeah,
thanks very much.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
Oh that is so very generous. And you've been very
very kind to me over all of these weeks and months,
and you know you've you've cheered me from afar before
having met me, and I so appreciate it because, like you,
I do sort of sit here going what is she
talking about about myself? And today you, yeah, say that
is a beautiful thing. So thank you, and I look

(01:11:59):
forward to adding you to the newsletter. Thank you for
telling everyone about that, because you will be in the
newsletter this week. So if anyone wants to sign up
and be able to click directly on this wonderful episode
with Eila Type one on one dot com forward slash newsletter,
there we go. And I will of course put all
your information in the episode description so that people can

(01:12:21):
click away and find you as well. But thank you
so so much for your time. Thank you very much,
Virtual hugs all around. I hope you enjoyed this episode
of Type one on one. Please remember that nothing you
hear on this podcast should be taken as medical advice.
I'm definitely not a healthcare professional. If you like what

(01:12:44):
you hear, hit subscribe and do leave a little review
on iTunes if you have time. It really helps to
spread the word about type one diabetes, and thank you
so much for listening.