A week ago I attended the Diabeter College Tour. This is an initiative of Diabeter, a Dutch organisation that offers suiting health care to young diabetics. Diabeter offers this health care outside the 'standard' hospital health care. Besides offering health care services they also have a shop, the diabshop, where you can order all your medical supplies. On their website www.diabeter.nl, you'll find more information about Diabeter, who they are, what they stand for and how they work. Their website also translates to English!Back to the College Tour, this was basically an evening where lot's of different companies that are related to Diabetes supplies or just patient associations presented themselves. This was also an evening where different experts gave lectures on different subjects regarding Diabetes. For example, one was about Diabeter and another one was about Diabetes and the latest innovations.
Before the official lectures started "(angry) chick on a mission" Izaira Kersten gave us a theatrical performances about her and her Diabetes. Izaira has Type 1 Diabetes, like me, and her performance gave the audience a very comical view of how she handles her Diabetes. She started with the way she does the groceries. "Butter, 0gr carbs. Light jam, 8,5 gr carbs per 15 gr. Whole wheat bread, 14 gr carbs per slice." Then she continued on how she deals with hypoglycaemias. I found it ridiculously funny, not only because it just was really funny but also because it was so relate-able.The moral of her story was something, maybe even more relate-able. In the beginning she called herself an "angry chick on a mission". A young woman who suddenly got diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Her life turned upside down, young women don't want to inject themselves with insulin, they don't want to look like a mathematician every time they go out to eat somewhere else or go grocery shopping. She told us she felt very alone, alone and angry. "Why me?!" was what she kept asking herself. She was angry at herself, at the doctors, at her Diabetes and at the world. The world had no idea how to handle her diabetes, or what it actually is so how could she understand it?
At the end of her performance she learned to deal with her Diabetes more and to keep the complications that might come with it in mind. Now she's just a "chick on a mission". Trying to inform people without Diabetes what it's all about and that you don't have to be old or fat to get it. She wants to inform people, especially young people, with Diabetes that they aren't as different as they think they are. That they're not alone. That there are thousands like them, young people and old people, all with the diagnosis Type 1 Diabetes. All with their own stories, struggles and dilemmas. She wants to rid the world of rumours about Diabetes and unite Diabetics.
A chick on a mission. That chick on her mission definitely spoke to me, made me realise that I share her goal and maybe that's one of the things I want to use this platform for. To inform diabetics and non-diabetics on what diabetes actually is, what you need to keep in mind everyday, how it affects my life. However most of all, I want to inspire. I want to inspire the world that even though I have diabetes, even though I have to wear an insulin pump on my body 24/7, I can do everything I want. I can do whatever I want and whenever I want it. My diabetes isn't so much a bad thing. I can live with it and everyday I learn something new about it, about my diabetes, about diabetes in general and someday I hope I live to see diabetics being cured.
Until that day I hope to inspire and inform people about what I have, how I deal with it and the endless amount of options I still have in life!
Lots of love,
ThatDutchGirl96, a diabetic chick on a mission!