Determined to make big changes

These days, Shiplo Zaman is a different man. Over the past year and a half, he lost 18 kg and has regained his body from his early 20s. Just last January, at 90 kg and with a BMI of 31, he was told he was clinically obese. He was also struggling with high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

As a person with Type 1 diabetes, this only added to the daily challenge of managing his blood glucose levels, which at that point, were fluctuating drastically.

Feeling unwell, unhappy, and frustrated, Shiplo realised he needed to make a change – a big one.

Constant worries, careful considerations

Emma Rochester has spent her whole life being reminded of the importance of taking care of herself and managing her Type 1 diabetes.

Emma was diagnosed with Type 1 when she was five years old. Every day since then, she has had to carefully consider every choice she makes, be it in regards to food or physical activity, as it can have consequences on her overall health and wellbeing.

“I’m constantly worrying about complications,” Emma, 43 said. “People without diabetes don’t usually have to think as much about how their body is going to react to stress, anxiety, excitement, all of which can affect blood glucose levels. It would be nice to go 24 hours without having to worry about what I put in my mouth or what my body is doing. For me, staying positive can sometimes be a challenge.”

Overnights and sleepovers

When 10-year-old Ariyana Salek was using multiple daily injections to manage her Type 1, she wasn’t allowed to go on sleepovers.

She had to miss an overnight retreat at her local Rainbow girls’ club in Cambridge and hear about the shenanigans the day after.

Invitations from schoolmates were declined. Pillow fights and hushed fits of giggles missed.

But life has changed dramatically for Ariyana since going onto the Cellnovo System, which allows her mother, Tracy Assari, to monitor her daughter’s blood glucose levels and insulin dosage remotely, thanks to the system’s online platform and real-time data reporting which is displayed automatically and captured securely, via secure servers.

Dailly routines

Every day before Ruth Irvine leaves the house for work, she sneaks into her son’s room to do a blood glucose reading while he’s still sleeping.

She grabs his hand, pricks the tip of his finger and checks out his blood glucose reading to make sure he’s within range.

Sam, who is 18, is now used to it and doesn’t mind as much as be used to.

It’s become a daily routine for the two, since Sam was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 11.

Diabetes and food

When you’re diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of five, and every meal from that moment on must be converted or calculated and meticulously timed, your relationship to food becomes drastically different from those who live without the condition.

For nearly 42 years, Sally Read has never known the carefree pleasure of tucking into a plate of pasta Bolognese, for example, without having to make mental calculations about the quantity of carbohydrates or worrying about the potential consequences of miscalculating the amount of insulin necessary to balance it out.

Simple pleasures

Kim Kemp is looking forward to her holiday in France this summer.

For the first time in 24 years, she won’t have to plan extra snacks or think about the next time she has to give herself injections during the long drive from her home in Plymouth, UK, to the French camp site.

On the way back, for instance, when the family has to wake up at 4 am to make the ferry on time, she’ll be able to simply climb into the car with the rest of her bleary-eyed family knowing that her insulin levels are in check with her Cellnovo pump.

There will be no need to force herself to have an early breakfast to manage her BG levels or administer any injections.

It’s the simple pleasures like this that Kim, 58, has rediscovered since going onto the Cellnovo System.