Shoot Up or Put Up

As I write this I’m still gently suffering from my hangover resulting from the Shoot Up night out yesterday. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the glasses of merlot I consumed was off, hence feeling slightly off-key today. However, it’s nothing a gallon of water and two paracetamol won’t cure.

Anyway, self-inflicted misery aside, yet again we had a thoroughly good turnout of Edinburgh’s pancreatically-challenged hoards. While I carefully brought my camera with me I stupidly neglected to take a single photo, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that a good time was had by all.

Given that Edinburgh-based diabetics clearly enjoy a pint or two, I’m planning the next night out for sometime in late March / early April or thereabouts. So keep an eye on events calendar down there (*points down the right of your screen*) for times and dates!

Diabetics. And beer.

Tim:

I awoke this morning with a slight hangover, but still flush with the wild success of Shoot Up’s first ever meet up / piss up.

As advertised in those articles down the page, my esteemed co-writer Alison along with her husband Geoff ventured north of the border and braved the cold, rain and general misery to come and stay with us for the weekend and to help host Shoot Up’s planned sober, quiet and reflective meet up.

Fueled with a heady combination of mulled wine and tapas we arrived in Au Bar to really meet our first ever real-life real readers (to whom we’re not related). We quickly established that, contrary to popular belief, people you meet via the Internet are not all escaped serial killers and we settled down to a great evening of beer, wine and diabetes chat (there was also some extensive discussion about zombies, but that’s another story).

Swapping tips and experiences was extremely useful and I was really pleased to see how many lovely diabetics Edinburgh has! Hurrah! The next meet up is already being planned so watch this space!

Alison:

They came! Real people who read our blog out of choice rather than family obligation. And they were lovely. Intelligent, entertaining, fun people. We spent several happy hours drinking beer and meandering through life’s important topics – how great but chilly it is to ride the Christmas ferris wheel in the lovely city of Edinburgh; how just because Edinburgh apparently has the best diabetes care in Scotland the fact that it isn’t delivering against some of the guidelines means there’s plenty of room for improvement; how Tim has learnt to live with the fact that Katie has taken a bit of a shine to comedian Russell Howard; why our British readers seem much more reluctant than our American readers to comment on our blog;  and how to transpose music for an E flat tenor horn - at which point Tim and I were completely lost.

Pharmacist Simon thanked us diabetic types for being such a reliable income stream for professional drug pushers like him but despite much encouragement we couldn’t get him to reveal how many diabetic patients he needs to be able to afford a nice yacht.

Thanks to Tim and Katie for their wonderful hospitality – anyone who has a warm pair of slippers and a glass of port waiting for us after a long journey gets 5 stars from me!

I suspect further Edinburgh meet ups will be on the horizon, but we’re also pondering heading south to sunny Liverpool for the next meet up – could we tempt you to that?

Just a reminder (as if you would have forgotten!) that your soaraway Shoot Up is having a pub night out this Saturday 28th November. We will be in Au Bar (101 Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, EH2 4SD – map here) from 7pm onwards.

I’ll be there with my esteemed co-writer, our respective spouses, my pharmacist (for some reason) and a whole bunch of other members of the pancreatically-challenged hoards. What could possibly be more fun?

All are very welcome to come along, chat about all things diabetes and drink high-carb beer! For identification purposes there are pictures of Alison and me here – but we’ll be the table easily identifiable by the people sitting at it injecting stuff. If you need any further details feel free to drop me an email at tim@shootuporputup.co.uk. See you there! (And just because you’re in another country or continent is no excuse for non-attendance…)

Well chaps, it’s that time of year again – World Diabetes Day. It’s like a diabetic Christmas, Yom Kippur and Eid-ul-Fitr all rolled into one. If you don’t already know everything about it you can check out the WDD site here.

My esteemed co-writer has already mentioned some things you might want to do; but I for one, being a huge and active supporter of diabetes causes *cough* will be spending the day tinkering in the garage, going to do nice birthday-related things with my wife and then traipsing to the pub to drink wine with our friends in the evening. Go me – diabetes campaigner supreme!

Last Saturday at 9.30am (which, as any normal person will realise, is far too early for a Saturday morning) I arrived at Napier University for the famed annual LDRG diabetes conference.

I was slightly the worse for wear after a work-colleague’s retirement do the night before (I’m certain one of the glasses of champagne I quaffed was off) but things got better after a few cups of vile coffee and meeting cheery folks Aileen, Mary et al from IPAG Scotland – everyone’s favourite Scottish insulin pump support group.

The day progressed with some incredibly dull PowerPoint presentations of facts and figures relating to diabetes in the Lothians, which was wrist-slashingly fascinating. But things improved with some useful workshops – I went to one about putting health records online, which was presented by a GP who’s done just that and put all his patient’s record securely on the Internet. This allows the lucky blighters within his catchment area to be able to order repeat prescriptions, get test results and book appointments and so on from the comfort of their Internet-enabled whatever. Said GP has plans to convince the Scottish Government to roll this out throughout Scotland – and it would be great if he succeeds.

This was then followed by a session of chatting to the meter and pump reps over coffee in the foyer. So you’ll all be pleased to hear (unless, of course, your one of the reps I spoke to) that I’ve got a whole new load of meters to review – first impressions are not promising, so that’s something to look forward to!

This was followed by a buffet which wasn’t actually as vile as I thought it would be and an interesting workshop with a Q&A session on insulin through which we learnt a few tit-bits.  The afternoon went on with another useful workshop on insulin pump therapy, which just made me curse the NHS Gods that won’t give me a pump until hell freezes over (something which often happens in a Scottish winter. I say “hell” I really mean “Glasgow”).

Anyway, a good time was had by all and there was a lot of useful information but, as always, chatting with the rest of the pancreatically-challenged hoards was the best bit. Roll on the Shoot Up meet up at the end of the month!

Doesn’t time fly? In a couple of weeks its World Diabetes Day again.

There’s lots of good work going on around the world and it’s nice to see the major UK diabetes charities joining forces to work together to raise awareness of diabetes on 14th November – Diabetes UK ; JDRF;  Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation ;  Insulin Dependent Diabetes Trust ;  INPUT; and the UK Children with Diabetes Advocacy Group .

How can you get involved?

• Join thousands of others pledging to Get Serious about diabetes.
• Leave a message for Gordon Brown asking the UK Government to increase research funding for type 1 diabetes.
• Turn something blue. Last year in the UK alone we managed to light up more than 25 buildings with blue light on 14th November. This year we’re aiming for more. If you have a suitable specimen locally that you think would look rather fetching in blue, here’s some guidance on how to encourage it’s owners to support WDD.  
• Go blue online. On a more local level, why not turn your Facebook, Twitter or Myspace profile blue on 14th November to support WDD. For the technically inept like me, here’s how to do it.
• Go viral. Finally why not help to create the world’s longest viral highlighting the life long nature of diabetes.

I’ll be spending World Diabetes Day talking to parents of kids who’ve been recently diagnosed with diabetes. What’ll you be doing to mark our day?

“...so then I gave him an alpaca wool willy warmer and he said he’d use it to keep his cucumbers warm!” has to be my favourite quote of my diabetes filled weekend.

I spent a fun weekend in Birmingham with 70 people living with diabetes, working with diabetes or caring for people with diabetes. We were discussing priorities in diabetes care over the next few years and what charities could most effectively do to ensure they are delivered. Interesting stuff and more on that soon, but what made it fun was the breadth of conversations you have when you spend a weekend with a group who have only diabetes in common.

Having type 1 and being married to someone with type 1 is apparently a very good thing – you both understand what it’s really like to live with diabetes but the house looks like a war has broken out if you both have a hypo in the night.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time evangelising about pumps, CGMS and blogs.

Claire and I spent a while enthusing about the magic of DisneyWorld,

Gordon and I discovered a shared interest in ballroom dancing, although I think his talents in that area far exceed my attempts.

I met someone else who likes writing about diabetes – the famous and lovely Kate who writes about pumping in Diabetes UK’s Balance magazine.

We talked about how hard it is to get young people involved in volunteering but were very impressed to see that people are starting early nowadays as we shared the weekend with a 4 month old baby.

I talked to so many people about how attitude is so critical when it comes to living with diabetes. We talked about how easy it is to let yourself think that diabetes can stop you, when really it’ll only stop you if you let it. And on the other hand how when we’re sometimes a bit too tough and resilient for our own good people don’t see how hard it can be to live with diabetes or how much we need decent care.

The highlight of the weekend has to be the alpaca wool. Fellow pumper Marian keeps alpacas and livened up an edition of BBC’s Gardener’s Question time by sharing her views on the fertiliser properties of alpaca poo and presenting the Chair with her homespun alpaca wool made into an interesting garment. I didn’t expect to have that conversation when I set off for Birmingham on Saturday!

Delicious beer, yesterday

It is with ill-disguised excitement that I’m overwhelming proud to announce your soaraway Shoot Up’s new diabetic events calendar! Woo!

Over on the right hand side of the page (and by clicking here) you can see every diabetes-related event happening in the UK, as long as:

a) we’ve been told about it
b) we’ve bothered to add it to said calendar

If you want to tell us about an event you can have a look at the guidelines (such as they are) and then drop us an email to either of us or to our fancy-pants new email address events@shootuporputup.co.uk.

If that weren’t thrilling enough (readers with a fragile disposition may need to be sitting down for the next part) then I’m also frothing at the mouth with glee to announce Shoot Up’s inaugural meet up in Edinburgh on Saturday 28th November 2009. We’re announcing it quite early so our American friends have time to organise time off work, flights, entry visas, vaccinations, quarantine, etc., etc.

So come November, not only can you have the opportunity to meet me but you can also meet my esteemed co-writer Alison who is travelling up from the wilds of England to be here. Also present will be popular guest writer Katie (aka Tim’s wife) and the non-contributing but moral-supporting Alison’s hubby. Not only that, but Tim’s pharmacist will also be there, for some reason.

We’ll be meeting from 7pm onwards in Au Bar (it’s a pub, so over 18s only – sorry youngsters) on Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, EH2 4SD and we’ll try and keep the diabetes talk to a minimum. More details can be found on our Facebook events page or you can email either of us.

All are very, very welcome, so see you there!