Brighton With The Betes

Last weekend was the annual forum meet in sunny Brighton :)

Me and Amy decided a few months ago to make a weekend of it, as we'd never been to Brighton before, and stay for a long weekend so we could have a little holiday and a proper catch up with the forum D-Peeps!

The hotel was pretty basic but clean, and unfortunately didn't come with a mini-fridge.. luckily I'd sorted my Frio bag for my spare pens!! After a while settling in and unpacking we decided to go have a wander and explore our new surroundings (we were literally across the road from the beach).

Diabetes: "Oh I'm sorry, you've had it easy all day so I'm going to throw in a hypo! Moo ha ha"

About an hour and a half went by with me testing and scoffing the jelly beans until I reached the low 5's so off we went! The pier was about a 10/15 minute walk away along with the beach bars/shops and the city centre was about the same. We nipped back to the hotel to get our gladrags on - and I had to give a correction as had shot up to 14mmol!! - went to the pier to have a look round and grabbed some food.

Have to admit I was a little wary of the deckchairs as I've seen plenty of You've Been Framed clips of people falling straight through on their butts! But I stuck with it and even did my jab right on the middle of the pier! :D

Visited a couple of local bars (diet coke for me obv.) and then hit the hay after 11. Me being the clever soul I am had no idea how loud things would get and how noisy god damn seagulls can be!! Took until half 4 in the morning to finally get some sleep...

I'm sodding awful not great when I've had no sleep, as Amy found out on Saturday morning.. :)

But we did make it to the meet! (Did have a shower and go on some rides to wake me up a bit more). As this was my second one it was a lot less nerve wracking and I was actually chatting to new people instead of going all shy and quiet. I love being with other PWD because you can share your stories all day long and have a giggle without being asked 'are you sure you can have that?'. Due to my serious lack of sleep I started flagging by the afternoon so we did leave early and ended up having a mid-afternoon nap followed by an indian takeaway eaten with teaspoons!

Overall I had a brill weekend and my D behaved about 85% of the time which I'm pretty pleased with. Just wish I'd have had a better night so I could have had longer at the meet! *frowns*

Thank you Amy for putting up with me this weekend, it's not all been plain sailing but you've kept me smiling and have been an awesome BFF/adopted pancreas. I really enjoyed myself, so Brighton next year? ;)

*The guys in the background were from a Ginger Spice themed stag-do! :D

London Baby!

So this time last week I was recovering after a great day in London, (finally) meeting people from the forum and also from Circle D to celebrate Circle D's third birthday!

Felt incredibly nervous beforehand, despite having Amy with me as my plus on, but Shelley (Circle D Founder and D-Police for the day) put me at ease straight away and we had a great time! Unfortunately due to fixed tickets we left early, so we could squeeze a bit of Covent Garden shopping in before hometime.

It was great testing and injecting with everyone, and Amy fought very hard not to ask everyone what their results were! We even tested her blood sugar just so she didn't feel left out and she got a 4.0, her response was 'OMG I'm nearly hypo, do I need a jelly baby?' :)

We're hopefully going to the Brighton forum meet in July and staying in a hotel overnight so we can stay longer and get more time to chat with everyone. If the weather's as nice as last year then it should be brill!

April's turning out to be a very busy month D-appointment wise! With both my eye-screening and pre-consultant blood test on Tuesday, my actual consultant appointment at the end of the month and my meds review on May 5th! It's great that they all fall before my holiday.. but means about half a day of my lieu day :(  My last HbA1c was 8.4 at the beginning of the year so I'm really hoping for an improvement as I'd had three lots of illness over the Xmas/New Year period. Getting more readings under 10 thanks to my Carb Counting book, and my waking levels are still a little off but getting there, just hope that my hypo's haven't thrown it off too much..

xxx

Pics are from Shelley and Alan at diabetespoetry.blogspot.com