Shoot Up review of the year

By | 21 December, 2012
Ho ho ho! How Festive!

Ho ho ho! How Festive!

Well, chaps, I’m afraid it’s that time of the year again. It’s cold, dark, wet, you’re forced to buy expensive presents for distant cousins you don’t like and you have to pretend to be cheerful.

However, in amongst this Stygian bleakness is the one ray of the light that is the wondrous spectacle of the annual Shoot Up review of the year!

We started the year with a cheerful list of ways in which infusion sets can be accidently ripped from your flesh It seems there are a hundred-and-one ways around the house to separate your set from your body. It’s – as Lynne Foulds-Wood of 1980’s BBC Watchoog fame would say – a potential death trap!

We then moved onto equally cheery news that “Diabetic women are four times more likely to have a child with birth defects”. My co-writer rubbished the claims, but we all thought to ourselves “hmmm…now, why is Alison so interested in baby-related stories…?”

After these unhealthy doses of misery, wonderful Shoot Up contributor Liz cheered us all up with an article about Lola the Labradoodle. A dog with two major talents – one, the detection of hypos; two, the ability to be almost unfeasibly cute. Hurrah!

January also saw the rebranding of everyone’s second favourite diabetes charity – Diabetes UK.  It’s not for me to rake over the now-settled embers of the controversy caused by throwing a bit of cash at a rebrand. But a charity spending seventy bazillion quid on a new logo that I could do in my lunchtime? And I don’t like the colour. Or the typeface. I spent a day selling cakes to pay for that, you know.

Speaking of Diabetes UK, Shoot Up interviewed its Chief Exec – Baroness Young of Old Scone – and asked her some sensible questions to which we got some sensible answers. See! We’re not just about whimsy, we’re like the Newsnight / Today programme of the diabetes blogging world.

I then spent some time then banging on trying to get sympathy for being slightly ill, for which I got precious little. Alison then stepped in with an interview with the wonderful Shelley from Circle D  – Shoot Up’s very favourite diabetes support group. Not to be outdone on the Paxman stakes I then arranged an interview with Tom Craig about his new diabetes horror film.

April saw the unveiling of my groundbreaking Iron Maiden workout  and Alison revealing herself as a contrary diabetic but perhaps more importantly it saw Shoot Up’s first Liverpool meet up  in which we met up with readers and drank far too much port.

Further demonstrating our hard-hitting diabetes blog credentials (if such a thing can exist) Alison popped down to Parliament  with the JDRF to shout about diabetes. Rrragh!!  . Meanwhile delightful reader Anna went off to the Sports and Exercise weekend organised by Animas as Alison and I were too lazy to do anything relating to exercise.

Neville then took part in one of Shoot Up’s favourite activities – taking the piss out of inaccurate reports about diabetes in newspapers. What fun!

The summer saw Alison taking part in more selfless diabetes travel research while I wondered about how best to deal with young non-diabetics in an article with this year’s most tortuous headline

We then moved on to celebrate (celebrate?) National hypo awareness week , which I’m sure you’ll all agree was a massive success. And I managed to incorporate the longest footnote / disclaimer ever seen in a diabetes blog about the Olympics,  a sporting event only eclipsed by the brilliant Junior Cup Diabetes hosted by Medtronic and attended by football-mad football-expert Alison!

Alison then asked whether we should go all out for a cure for diabetes while breathtaking reader Faith reviewed the Glooko logbook and meter for us – it’s works off of off an iPhone don’t you know?

In amongst the excitement for World Diabetes Day (which we in;

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About Tim

Diagnosed with Type One when he was 28, Tim founded Shoot Up in 2009. For the diabetes geeks, he wears a Medtronic 640G insulin pump filled with Humalog and uses Abbott's Libre flash glucose monitor.

10 thoughts on “Shoot Up review of the year

  1. Alison

    Thanks @Tim , that was a busy year. Yet again I’m amazed we’re still here and people are still reading this stuff! And yes, there was a small part of me thinking, if we ever get the hang of this baby conception business there’ll be a million blog posts in it!

    Happy Christmas 🙂

    Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      It was a busy year – I left out a whole load of good stuff too. Glad to hear that Shoot Up articles were at least a minor part of your baby-related considerations! 😉

      Reply
    1. Tim Post author

      Why’s your picture sideways Lesley? Is it a new, fashionable thing you young people are doing nowadays?

      Reply
  2. Megs

    Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Shoot Up. All that fascinating information packed into one year, fantastic! I thank you kindly for stopping me straying to low carb recipe sites for the past 12 months. Good stuff.

    Reply

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