Diabetes Consultation

By | 23 June, 2009
A veritable smorgasbord

A veritable smorgasbord

As I mentioned in an earlier post I went along to the Scottish Diabetes Action Plan Consultation organised by Diabetes UK yesterday evening and it was all quite interesting. The meeting was intended to give the Scottish Government feedback on what us pancreatically-challenged ruffians want out of our health service and so, in my view (for what it’s worth) it’s quite important.

The first thing that struck me was the light buffet that was kindly laid on for us. Being a meeting exclusively made up of diabetics it, of course, consisted of ultra high-carb pasta and potato-salad. To rub in this paradoxical smorgasbord all the more, I noticed there were some Diabetes UK “Watch what you Eat” leaflets dotted about, advocating a low GI diet. My sides almost split with the irony of it all, but the soup was nice.

The second thing that struck me was that, not for the first time, I was the one token person-who-wasn’t-retired in attendance. Sorry to point it out – if any of the attendees are reading this – but I have to say I did bring the average age crashing down somewhat. But even saying that, at a positively ancient 32, I’m still not exactly representative of the “juvenile” diabetes community.

I’m pretty sure the east of Scotland has diabetics under the age of thirty and I’m also pretty sure that the lack of young people this is not wildly unusual at these things. So why is this?

To be honest I’ve no idea. Having a say is vitally important in any aspect of life – for example, I think that people who can’t be bothered to vote in elections are contemptible idiots who have no right to complain about any service they receive from government or indeed any action that government takes in their name. It’s the same with healthcare – you have no right to bitch about poor healthcare or lack of NHS funding for pumps or new technologies if you don’t take part in feeding into consultations like these.

After doing all this, you still might not get what you want but, by God, you then have every right to make a nuisance of yourself and bitch, bitch, bitch. And, tell you what, I love bitching!

Category: politics Tags:

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.

One thought on “Diabetes Consultation

  1. Alison

    Good on you for going Tim. Its notoriously hard to get youngsters like us (although we’re rapidly getting too old for that description!) involved. I agree with you though, challenging the status quo and providing constructive feedback are the only way we’re going to get improvements.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *