26
LIVING
Feel free
Colette Marlow reveals that it took her 18 years
from diagnosis to have the confidence to go on an
insulin pump.
advertorial sponsored by Insulet
Colette Marlow was
diagnosed with Type 1
diabetes 30 years ago in
June 1992. She had only
been married for six months and
she remembers that she had very
little knowledge about the condition.
Her cousin had Type I diabetes. She
remembers seeing his insulin in the
fridge once when she visited, "There
was so much of it," she says, "that I
thought he must be really ill. I was
quite shocked."
Initially, after diagnosis, Marlow
went to a diabetologist because her
focus at that point was on having
children. She also shares that at that
time she just wanted her diabetes to
keep up with her, and her busy life.
Diabetes did not stop Marlow from
having her family and she went on to
have three children.
In the year 2001, she and her
family went to live in Hong Kong,
Marlow continued under the care
of a doctor. "Because of night-time
hypos, it was suggested even back
then that I go onto an insulin pump,
but I was not ready. I did not want a
device attached to me as I perceived
it as letting people know that I was
living with a medical condition. To
be honest, while the children were
young, I was often just injecting my
insulin on the go, not thinking about
effective diabetes management, and
my overall control was suffering as a
consequence."
"By the time I was back in the
UK it was beginning to dawn on me
that something needed to change.
This time I went to my diabetes
team at the hospital near to me,
where discussions began again about
going on to an insulin pump. After
seeing some pumps previously, I
had only one criteria, that it had to
be 'tubeless'. They showed me the
Omnipod® System, and from that
point on my life changed."
Mindset Matters
This was in 2010, 18 years since her
diagnosis. "I met with my healthcare
team," Marlow says, "and got to learn
how to use the Omnipod® System.
My expectation was that it would be
difficult to master, but after the right
training, I soon found myself getting
to grips with it. For me, there were
some initial benefits- like my insulin
requirements reducing.
"I went on a retreat in Portugal"
she recalls, "and I really started to
listen to my body better and learned
to micro-manage my diabetes via my
Omnipod® System while also using a
glucose sensor.
I now take a lot of care over what
I eat. I use an app on my phone to
scan barcodes so I know as much