Life with Type 1
When Jody O’Callaghan told her type 1 diabetes story on a national news site, she was unprepared for the huge response.
GETTING REAL
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s a stuff.co.nz journalist, Jody is well versed in writing about other people’s struggles. But putting her own story out there, about a lifechanging event in her own family, was new. To mark Diabetes Awareness month, Jody wrote about the day in mid-2020 when she was hit by a sudden, severe blood-sugar low while at home in Christchurch with her two preschool daughters. She collapsed, unconscious, on her kitchen floor, with a cake cooking in the oven. Her daughters spent nearly two hours trying to wake her up every way they could think of, to no avail. Then, says Jody, “By a strange twist of life-saving fate, my husband decided for the first time ever to come home from work early that day.” Her husband Ben remembers, “I knew something was up right away when my two-year-old came rushing into the garage, literally as I was driving in. She was hysterical, asking me to get inside, saying, ‘Mummy fall over, mummy fall over!’ “When I found Jody on the floor, I knew straight away it was a low.” He called an ambulance, then Jody’s mother. “I had no idea how long she’d been out for, so I went straight into getting sugar into her.” He was desperately scared, but trying to remain calm for his daughters. “It took ages for Jody to come to, and the ambo was taking a while.” In fact, Jody’s mother,
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DIABETES WELLNESS | Autumn 2021
who lived 45 minutes away, got there first. By then, Ben’s efforts had roused Jody, but she’d been unconscious and sweating for so long that she’d become hypothermic and had to be taken to hospital. A NEW LEAP
A few days later, Jody was back at work and helping a colleague with a medical story. She offered to ring a health professional she had known since her diagnosis with type 1. Jody says, “He asked, ‘How's your health?’ and I told him about the incident. He said, ‘no, that's not good enough’.” Soon after, she trialled the Freestyle Libre. Jody had been interested in diabetes technology for years, but this was the first time she’d had the opportunity to try anything out. “I used the Libre for a month or so, and it was great. But, at the end of the day, it didn't do the one thing that we needed for peace of mind, which was sending bloodsugar alerts to my husband and anyone else when I’m home with the kids.” The Libre was already an extra financial outlay, but Jody and Ben decided that, because they were able to, it was worth it to take the leap, pay more, and get a Dexcom G6 instead. The Libre is a flash glucose monitor (FGM): it gives you instant blood-sugar readings with the swipe of a scanner. The Dexcom
G6 is a continuous glucose monitor (CGM): it automatically reads your blood sugar every five minutes and sends those readings to any device you have it linked to. Crucially, it can also be set to send out customisable alerts when your blood sugar is heading out of your target range. Jody, Ben, and Jody’s mother now all have access to Jody’s alerts. Jody says that on more than one occasion she’s had to reassure her mother over the phone. “I go for a run or I'm doing exercise, and it starts to go low, and she calls me. I’m like, it’s okay mum, I'm just trying to get on top of it.” She laughs. “Mothering doesn't stop!” She sees the occasional overworry that others might have about her as all part and parcel of the new security the Dexcom has given her. “It’s a huge relief.” She also admits she could imagine doing that kind of worrying herself if either of her own children had type 1. “It’s that parental thing. You want to take it away from your children, don’t you – take their suffering away … I still remember Mum and Dad blaming themselves when I was diagnosed, silly as that sounds.” Her concern for her own health is also deeply tied to her role as a parent. Looking back, she thinks she had a “she'll be right, it's fine” attitude about her hypos. “You get used to it being just a reality, which is awful, but you kind of dismiss it.
