My Identity
THE BOSS OF MY TYPE 1 T
welve-year-old Kiki has a hectic but fun-filled weekly itinerary. When the Kerikeri local isn’t at school, she’s busy at various dance classes at her dance school, Dance Vibes NZ, learning jazz, hip hop, and acrobatics. Add to that regular jazz competitions and, in summer, swimming and paddle boarding – which she competes in. Last year, she came first when she represented her school in the Northland Secondary Schools Paddle Boarding Competition. Kiki was diagnosed with type 1 when she was 10, and in that time Kiki has chosen to own her condition. Seiko, her mum, says she doesn’t even know how to change her daughter’s insulin
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DIABETES WELLNESS | Autumn 2025
pump sites. That’s because, right from the get-go, Kiki hasn’t let her do that. As soon as she learnt the ins and outs of pumps and CGMs, Kiki told her mum, ‘I’m going to do it.’ Seiko calls her daughter ‘the boss of her type 1’. Kiki says it was a weird way for her to find out she had type 1 diabetes. Right from when she was very young, she and her mum would travel to Japan each year and spend three months in Hiroshima. In that time, Kiki would join the local primary school and immerse herself in her mum’s language and culture. Each April, before children start their school year in Japan, they have a comprehensive health
check, which includes physical, dental, vision, and hearing tests. Even a mobile x-ray bus comes to the school for chest x-rays. As part of the health check, a urine test is also taken, and this is when Kiki got the news. ‘I wasn’t sick or anything. It kinda popped up out of nowhere.’ Kiki’s immediate response was excitement. ‘Am I the same as Stacey?’ she asked her mum. The Babysitter’s Club was Kiki’s favourite tv show at the time, and in it is Stacey, a character with type 1. Kiki explains, ‘She had an insulin pump and she used to decorate it, and I was like, I’m going to be like this movie star because I’ve got diabetes! But then a few months
© FLASH GORDON PHOTOGRAPHY
Kiki Shimozono-Reid shares what it’s like being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when you’ve gone to live in Hiroshima, Japan, for three months.
