KITLIVING
continued over
has a 17-year-old daughter with Type
1, diagnosed at age 11, while Hazel
Swift, who also is part of the team, was
diagnosed quite recently with Type 1, just
before her 30th birthday. The newest
member, Chanika Lowrey, also has some
experience, as her mother-in-law also has
Type 1.
Diabetes lifestyle
Dring hasn't looked back. She says, "The
business is going really well and continually
growing. We do a lot of personalised
bags, where we source fabrics, so we
can have items made with designs to
suit customers interests/hobbies, and so
on. Our bestselling product is Diawipes;
these are an essential part of a diabetes
testing kit. We are constantly adding new
and exciting products to the website, that
will assist having Type 1. I love my job
so much; it's so rewarding knowing I am
helping others with Type 1 and assuring
them that you can live a completely
normal life with it."
In recent years Dring started to take
a greater interest in diabetes technology
beyond injecting and blood testing. "It
was when I was pregnant with the twins
that I started to think about using new
technologies," she says, "I had to manage
with multiple daily injections [MDI] and
[SMBG] and it was hard. The targets were
very difficult to achieve; I was meant to
be at 3.8 mmol before each meal, once a "I took the step of self-funding Dexcom
CGM sensors. It felt like I went from
being fully manual, doing blood tests
all the time, to being like a robot.
Dexcom's sensors just do all that for
me with a lot less fuss, while giving
me even more information to use.
L-R: Mike O'Brien, Lee Calladine, Gill O'Brien,
Hannah Dring and Joe O'Brien at a DRWF event.