Joe Solowiejczyk workshop

Tonight I was very lucky and got to go and see Joe S give a speech/talk/workshop. The focus of the workshop was the family approach to teens with t1. It was fascinating and wonderful to be in a room of families living with d.

Joe is a very inspirational guy; he spent as much time talking to the kids as he did to the adults. He discussed approaches to angry kids with type 1 - or defiant ones. It was excellent, I highly recommend seeing him if you can.

What was awesome was I got talking to a girl before the talk, who was there with her parents and brother. She was yonger than me - I'm terrible at guessing ages, I would guess 13 or 14? We chatted a little, her parents said that they were really struggling to keep her glucose levels within range. I took over my Contour USB testing kit to show her, and the girl was really impressed, especially as I pointed out you can just plug it in to the computer and it makes lovely graphs and stuff. She said how she doesn't like to talk about, and I told her I was the same when I was her age (er, but not in a patronising way).

Near the end of the speech, Joe asked us [t1s] what the biggest challenge was. I said that for me, the biggest challenge is that type 1 can be such a lonely condition, and that it's vital for people to be in touch with one another. He jokingly said "well, do you have a phone number you can give the parents?!" so I replied "no, but I do write a blog!" to which he said that when he put up his contact details on screen, I would be welcome to put up my blog details there too. So I did! I hope that some of you reading were there tonight. It was wonderful to speak to and meet you all.