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Episode 32: One Family’s Type 1 Journey (Part 1 - Double Diagnosis)
141 Plays1 month ago
We’re kicking off 2026 with a powerful and deeply moving conversation.
In this episode of The Type 1 Club, Jacqui is joined by Liz Blackburn, a mum to two energetic boys, Jimmy and Dan, both living with Type 1 diabetes. Liz shares what it’s like to walk the diagnosis road not once, but twice and how experience, intuition and community shaped their family’s journey.
Liz takes us back to Jimmy’s diagnosis, which unfolded while the family was on holidays on the NSW mid-north coast. What began as bedwetting, excessive thirst and weight loss quickly escalated into a late-night ambulance transfer and an urgent hospital admission, just in time to prevent DKA.
Three years later, the story takes an unexpected turn. After choosing to participate in Type 1 Screen (listening to Episode 17 for further information), Liz and her family learned that their younger son Dan had positive antibodies. With monitoring underway, the family hoped diagnosis might still be years away, until subtle symptoms appeared during another coastal break. This time, knowledge and preparation meant Dan was diagnosed early and safely, surrounded by his family and medical team back home.
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If you'd like to share your story with our podcast listeners, please email: podcast@type1foundation.com.au
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Transcript
Introduction and Disclaimer
00:00:00
Speaker
The content provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.
Welcome to Type 1 Club
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Type 1 Club. Whether you're a parent grappling with a new diagnosis, a caregiver seeking guidance, or simply someone wanting to learn more about type 1 diabetes, this podcast is for you.
00:00:36
Speaker
Together, let's dispel myths, break down barriers and build a community of understanding and resilience. Join us as we embark on this journey together, because with knowledge, compassion and support, no one should ever feel alone in managing type 1 diabetes.
00:00:54
Speaker
Welcome to the Type 1 Club.
Introducing Jackie Kidman and Liz Blackburn
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to the Type 1 Club. I am your host, Jackie Kidman. I am a Type 1 mum to a 10-year-old boy named Harvey. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in June 2022, just after his seventh birthday.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm very excited to be back sharing this podcast with you. We are launching the first episode for 2026 today. so I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas break and you're enjoying the summer. The guest I have today is I feel like it's going to be a bit of a, you know, starting off with a bit of a bang for the year.
00:01:37
Speaker
So no no pressure, Liz. But I would really love to welcome another type 1 mum named Liz Blackburn. Welcome to the podcast, Liz. Thank you, Jackie. Very excited to have you and to hear your type 1 stories. um It's a bit of a plural kind of episode.
00:01:57
Speaker
kind of story that we're going to share today. Liz, maybe just start by introducing yourself and if you wanted to share your first child's diagnosis
The Blackburn Family's Diagnosis Story
00:02:07
Speaker
story.
00:02:07
Speaker
Thank you, Jackie. Yes, I am a double type one mum. I have two busy boys, Jimmy, who is currently 10, and Dan, who is currently 7. Jimmy was first diagnosed and three years later, our second son, Dan, followed.
00:02:31
Speaker
So tell us about Jimmy's diagnosis story. Timmy is currently 10, but he was diagnosed four years ago when he was almost seven.
00:02:43
Speaker
um He's approaching his 11th birthday. So he was diagnosed on the 24th of January in 2022, and we were holidaying at the time So our family likes to go to a little place on the mid-north coast of New South Wales called Southwest Rocks. I'm not sure if anyone's familiar, but it's a fairly small, popular little holiday destination. So for us, we live in regional New South Wales at a place called Tamworth. From Tamworth to Southwest Rocks, it's four and a bit hours. So we spend the last week of January most years at Southwest Rocks, and it was our and annual pilgrimage to Southwest Rocks that was Jimmy's diagnosis.
00:03:34
Speaker
And what what was happening before just before that? I mean, I know we have Christmas and New Year's and stuff in terms of that, but what was happening for you guys, for Jimmy? Yeah, so Jimmy's a really active, busy ah little man. he was almost seven, very sporty, and January school holidays, like most parents who try and keep your children busy. He had been doing a lot of extra, you know, sport and those types of school holiday activities. I think there might have been a tennis camp or clinic. There might have been a basketball clinic. um He was also involved in a little athletics carnival all in ah the week or two prior to his diagnosis. And he'd been go, go, go And we thought,
00:04:24
Speaker
um When he first started to wet the bed, we thought, oh, gosh, is he just buggered from all of this running around in the heat of summer?
00:04:37
Speaker
So, yes, the wetting, the bed, the the urination was what was the very first sign. And a few days before we left for the coast, I thought, no, I'm just going to give him a couple of days, chill out at home. We didn't go anywhere, do anything. And off we went to the coast. And in the car, he was drinking excessively.
00:05:01
Speaker
So telltale sign number two, but at this stage nothing was twigging. I just thought I had a little boy being a bit naughty in the backseat sculling water. Of course. So you have to pull over all the time to go to the toilet. Yeah. It's a four-hour trip. Yeah. So we usually stop about halfway um and we're at our usual halfway. We're approaching our usual halfway destination, which is a little town called Dorigo. We always stop there. There's a park. There's some bathrooms. Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I could see Dorigo. I could actually see it in the distance. And it was five minutes out of town. And I said, mate, we can, know, stop your Dorigo. he was begging me, please, I need to go to the toilet.
00:05:47
Speaker
So we stopped on the edge of Dorigo. He did a wee on the side of the road. And by this stage, he'd drunk two or three bottles of water and we'd been saying, yeah, got to stop so we did stop again in dorago had lunch or whatever we did on the way and he went to the toilet again and then there was more requests for bathrooming um in the next two hours whatever it was on the road ahead and the drinking continued and by this stage we we'd gotten to the coast and very fortunately we met my brother and sister-in-law there
00:06:26
Speaker
And they had seen him at Christmas, so only a month prior. And they said, Jim, Jimmy's lost weight in that one month. And I guess when you spend all day every day with a child, you sort of don't notice.
00:06:40
Speaker
So next thing we've got, you wetting the bed, thirst, weight loss, and my husband twigged. And he said, if you thought about Jimmy's sugars?
00:06:53
Speaker
I said, what, no. No, what does, would that would that, is there a connection to type 1? and So Doug's grandmother was, we were told type 2 diabetic. She was diagnosed later in life, but she was insulin dependent.
00:07:15
Speaker
She has now passed and I guess we'll never know any more information on that. Yeah, and maybe because she was, Later in life, they have just kept, they just put it it as type two.
00:07:26
Speaker
You know how they used to do that? Yeah, maybe. And so that was the only thing in his mind and um request, ah sorry, a girlfriend of mine is a nurse in back home in Tamworth and something twigged in the back of my mind that she might've been a diabetes educator.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so I called her and said, what do you think? And she said, no, it's actually not me. It's it's another friend that we went to school with, Kate. So I called Kate and she said, oh, Liz, it doesn't sound good.
00:07:59
Speaker
Liz, I've got goosebumps over me. asked of that Yeah. By this stage, Jimmy was sitting on our lap on the beach. He was not wanting to run around with the other children. He wouldn't stray too far from food or water. He was actually starting to feel like vomiting.
00:08:17
Speaker
um The bedwetting had continued and she said, get yourself to a chemist and get his sugars
Managing Diabetes During Family Holiday
00:08:24
Speaker
finger-pricked. We had no idea what we were talking about at this stage. It actually took a while. it was a day or so later up by the time the chemist was available for that to occur.
00:08:36
Speaker
By that stage, he couldn't get a reading. He said,
00:08:42
Speaker
you You know, how the you know how the the finger prickers won't read any higher. um So off we went to the nearest hospital, which is still only a medium-sized town, Kempsey.
00:08:55
Speaker
He was more or less informally diagnosed in Kempsey but then rushed to port Macquarie, which is a large coastal town. How far away was that? That was an hour or so um in the ambulance at 2am in the morning.
00:09:10
Speaker
and um yeah, so... He was formally diagnosed the next day, 24th of January, in Port Macquarie, an hour or so up the road from where we were holidaying and four hours from from home.
00:09:25
Speaker
Wow. Port Macquarie was like the, they then just thrust you into the, okay, this is your new life. So training and stuff like that happened there? Yes. Yeah, we we caught Jimmy, I think, just in time before DKA or so we were told.
00:09:41
Speaker
His sugar reading was 41. And ketones or no ketones? um gi guney yes Yes, ketones. um I can't remember the reading off the top of my head, but he had begun... smelling of the sweet breath. And when he presented at Kempsey, they were all astounded given his numbers that he was still sitting up and conversing with us.
00:10:10
Speaker
So I think we caught him just in time and we didn't know any, you know, we had no idea that kids could be DKA or kids could go unconscious. We had no idea how lucky we were to catch him when we did.
00:10:23
Speaker
But in hindsight, we now know Yeah, and how quickly it can change as well, you know. So you're gone from, you know, like you're just driving onto your holiday and then all of a sudden he's, you know, like he's weeks before he's playing all these sports, then all of a sudden it's just like he's just sitting on your lap and he's not, you know, not as active and then all of sudden. Jimmy. yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. He sounds very similar to Harvey actually, like when you're like, you know, like tennis, basketball. I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very similar to Harvey is that active level and he's
00:10:55
Speaker
you Yeah, you when they when you when they're not kind of moving around, you know that there's something not right. Yes, indeed. With those kids. That's right. Even, sort you know, it's separate to type one, it's sort of like you're like, okay, what's going on? You know, there's cold or there's something else happening here. Yes. Yeah, so we spent three days in hospital tag-teaming my husband and I between the hospital bed and And our holiday unit back in South West Rocks with our other son. um And we were incredibly great incredibly grateful enough to this day that we had my brother and sister-in-law there at the time. Also some friends yeah around. And we were able to call on them to...
00:11:40
Speaker
have our other son we were. How good is it to have your your village just step you know? Yeah, and you know, as fate may be that we had them there. So we actually were um able to return. i think we had, you know, 10 days or something total at the coast and with three or four days in the middle of that in hospital, Jimmy was actually able to return back to her holiday unit and we finished our holiday together. How do you go going back to that location? Do you still go back to that location now? We do. we do. yeah Initially I was a little scarred.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah, bit of a trauma bit of a trauma response to go back to the scene of the crime kind of thing. you're like Yeah, we no longer go to that unit just coincidentally because it's no longer available. Maybe that makes a difference. that yeah But it's a it's ah it's also a happy place for us.
00:12:36
Speaker
Okay, so then you go on for... go on with living your new normal? yeah and he doing what What's he doing? Is he doing manual injections? Yeah, so Jimmy was put onto a pump and CGM very soon after diagnosis.
00:12:53
Speaker
um He uses a Medtronic 780G and at the time, early 2022, was one of the first to receive and go on to that pump. So he felt like he was a bit of a groundbreaker at the time. love that. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. By this stage he'd turned seven, so he was newly seven and he had his whiz-bang 780G and, um yeah, life continued hard and, you know, it was tough, really tough.
00:13:25
Speaker
How did he with sports and stuff, wearing the, um with his pump? Yeah, i I relied heavily on my husband in regard of the tech. I was still reeling emotionally from the actual diagnosis.
00:13:40
Speaker
probably wasn't ready to deal with all of the tech as well. Completely get that. I was the same. i was sort of like, as people will know if they listen to the podcast, that, yeah, it was, we had, we did the finger pricks and MDI, so the manual injections. um That was us for four months.
00:13:59
Speaker
Then we went on to a CGM and that was an adjustment for me. That was really a struggle because I had so much data that it was, yeah, like, and and dealing with that trauma of the of the diagnosis. And ah ah it took me, ah it took us, like, nearly three years to go into a pump because I was like, I completely get that. i was like, I can't add anything else yeah to my to my load. I just was like, nah, nah. Yeah, i I wouldn't have been able to do it on my own. But with a very techie husband, he was able to help with that side of things. um Yeah, so very soon, it was only a month or two after diagnosis, we went straight to a Guardian Sensor 3, it was at the time.
00:14:44
Speaker
yeah and And the 780G Medtronic, yes. But sport-wise, he coped well. So non-contact sports, he would just keep his pump on and still does. Like tennis?
00:14:59
Speaker
Is that what mean? Yeah, he's no longer a tennis player. But odds tag, he mostly keeps it on unless it's a competition, know, like rep or something. He might take it off for a rep game. But just for a regular game, he'd probably just keep it on.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, basketball, he mostly keeps it on I think if he's got a shirt tucked in, it keeps it a little sort of protected. He wears a a pump belt, the Dive Easy Lycra pump belts. They keep them quite nice and firm in on his abdomen. So, he He keeps it on for a fair bit of sport, but if it's a height high grade rep or something, he might take it off.
00:15:48
Speaker
Don't ignore the four. The four early warning signs of type 1 diabetes, excessive thirst, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss and extreme fatigue.
00:15:59
Speaker
If you or someone you know is experiencing these symptoms, don't wait. Get checked by a healthcare professional. Early detection and treatment are key to managing type 1 diabetes effectively.
00:16:12
Speaker
lot of people think because of the sport, like we, I know that we did because of the, high energy a lot of sport, felt like that it would be taking it off a lot. Yeah, athletics, he keeps it on as well.
00:16:24
Speaker
For rugby league tackle, he removes his pump and we apply extra adhesive over his insertion site and his um sensor, those stretch wrap pads.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, the the stretchy ones, some people call it horse tape. It sort of sticks to itself. We use that a lot around his sensor on his arm for rugby league. um And, yeah, we've been on the sideline reapplying sensors and in pump insertions and things after the game. So be it. We live out of town. Yeah, we live out of town.
00:17:08
Speaker
So we live 20 minutes out. Yeah. And so we can't just pop home. We have to carry all these spares with us. But um that's
Dan's Screening and Diagnosis
00:17:19
Speaker
part of the course. and So how long after Jimmy's diagnosis was your other son diagnosed? So there's a little bit of a story, backstory with this, in that Dan was six and was really inquisitive and
00:17:41
Speaker
kept asking am I going to get type 1 diabetes as well and I had no answers and I knew of the type 1 screen but I hadn't been prepared to go down that line until this point. um Jimmy had now been diagnosed about three years and I guess emotionally things had calmed a little bit and I thought, well, you know, maybe maybe we could screen down.
00:18:16
Speaker
So I asked him, not that you, you know, make a six-year-old, you know, call the shots, but I said to him, buddy, there is a a test that you can have that would let us know whether or not one day you might get type 1 and it might also rule it out and you know, let us know that you may not get type 1.
00:18:44
Speaker
Is that something that you would... ah So I put it on him. I said, is that something that you would like to do? it was. So I applied to the type 1 screen and i know you've had Professor John Wentworth on before, but we all, well, my husband and i and dan we all did our little finger prick screen and lo and behold Dan returned with two positive antibodies of the four that they test for. um That was then confirmed with blood tests um to be doubly sure and I spoke at length with
00:19:34
Speaker
um Professor John Wentworth and his staff, and we were referred to an endo-pede to a different one, to our own team at home with Jimmy, to then sort of be monitored into the future. so we had our very first telehealth with our new pedendo for Dan in think it was March 2024 and you know how long's a piece of string who knows when this may or may not present at that stage he was only what they refer to as stage or phase one of having these antibodies he hadn't progressed to stage two which is closer to diagnosis and at stage three is full through diagnosis and
00:20:29
Speaker
yeah
00:20:32
Speaker
A couple of weeks after we had that first telehealth appointment, next thing, we're at the coast having a mini break once again.
00:20:46
Speaker
Southwest Rocks this time. we were at a little place called Darlington Beach um just north of Cross Harbour. And Dan presented with first urination.
00:21:02
Speaker
And you see it so easily the second time around. However, there there's a little bit more to that part of the story.
00:21:13
Speaker
I had, when we got to Darlington Beach, I had an infection under my arm um and I ended up being hospitalised, completely unrelated, with this cellulitis under my arm.
00:21:31
Speaker
I was in hospital. i was in Coffs Harbour Hospital and my husband had the boys with, again, thankfully, his sister this time, his side of the family and his nieces and brother-in-law for a few days while I had a roaring infection in my armpit.
00:21:49
Speaker
And I got out of hospital and... They were still at the coast. We were all still at the coast.
00:21:57
Speaker
And i saw how thirsty Dan was and he had said to me as I put him to bed, Mummy, I'm so thirsty. i could drink this whole bottle of water.
00:22:13
Speaker
And I guess because I'd been in hospital, Doug had been toing and froing once again to the hospital. He hadn't picked up on it. And I just went, oh, my goodness, I think i think we're there already. I think think we're at phase three.
00:22:29
Speaker
But when you have a older sibling with type 1, you have a finger pricker with you. So I pricked Dan there and then. his sugars were about 20.
00:22:43
Speaker
And we knew. But this time we made the call. We knew we were not, we knew he wasn't too far down that line. he You know, he was thirsty and he was urinating but he was still quite well.
00:23:02
Speaker
He wasn't vomiting. He wasn't, you know, there was no breath. We said, we're getting in the car. We're driving. We're driving four hours home. We're going to be home.
00:23:13
Speaker
for Dan's diagnosis. And by this stage we'd rung my team, you know, my friend and my Jimmy's team and we'd said we're we're incoming with round two.
00:23:26
Speaker
And so we drove, we drove and we ate salad and we ate ham. ate all the zero carb snacks that you can possibly feed a family in the car on the way.
00:23:41
Speaker
And interestingly, by the time we got to Tamworth four hours later, his sugars were down to 12. Wow.
00:23:49
Speaker
his pancreas was still working to some extent. And so me, who was freshly out of Coffs Harbour Hospital with a drain in my arm, went into Kids Ward in Thomas-Based Hospital with Dan, should diagnosis number two.
00:24:05
Speaker
Wow, i i'm I'm sort of a little bit speechless. I know that feeling. We've done the eye screen, the screen test. I don't know, is it called eye screen? I don't know why I said that. Type 1 screen, I believe. Type 1 screen, yes. Okay. um We've done that test for for my Jimmy, which is the he's the eldest sibling, and I was quite...
00:24:32
Speaker
you I think through the three years of Harvey being diagnosed, you know, quite often I'll grab Jimmy and I'll be like, you seem to be drinking a bit of water. Oh, let's just do a finger prick. Or you look like you've lost a little bit of weight or, you know, but he's a teenager. He's kind of going through those growth spurts and, I don't know, maybe he doesn't drink water for the day and then all of sudden he's just drinking it for the at the end of the day, like, you know.
00:24:53
Speaker
And then we did the the screen test just this year, um well, 2025, five and ah it was that I was like, well, it took me a while to, it took me three years to really to do it because it's sort of like you want to know, take out the guess, but also you don't, you also want to kind of keep your head in the sand a bit because, know,
00:25:20
Speaker
it's you know it's a nice place to be when you kind of think it's just one and you don't want to have to think that your other child you know is at this risk because you know what they've got to go through don't you like you you know um and and also for you you're still dealing with the trauma of having one child let alone the second and yeah and then anyway we did we did the test and then it came back that jimmy didn't present any antibodies which was like great but um and I remember telling Harvey I said oh you know i told I told the boys and I said oh you know you got we got your test back and you're not presenting at this point because they could he still could in years down the track but he's obviously and um it was sort of a relief but yeah like I completely empathize with you that of like oh when you get that result like yeah
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I had to be very cryptic in the way that i dealt with that with Dan. Because he's still six, yeah? He's a six-year-old. Yeah. and Yeah, so I had said that there was something in his blood that the doctors would like to check some more.
00:26:35
Speaker
um and It didn't necessarily mean that he was going to get diabetes, but, um you know, we just need to to check that some more and we might need to keep checking checking it into the future. How was Jimmy when his brother was diagnosed? Sad.
00:26:49
Speaker
sad for him? Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah, empathy. doesn't, it can't, well. sympathise, empathise any more than if you've walked that road yourself.
00:27:03
Speaker
And I guess he was a similar age. Yeah, they about six. He was worried and feared for his brother, but it also helped that we could say, look, Dan, look at Jimmy.
00:27:18
Speaker
He, you know, he competes at really high level in sport and he wears his pump and goes to school like everyone else and He's a happy little Vegemite and you too can live that life.
00:27:31
Speaker
I think regardless because, yeah, like my Harvey's brother was but had the same emotions in terms he was really worried for him. He was really, you know, but he didn't know what he was going through, you know, like he didn't like whereas Jimmy, you're right, he's walked that path. He knows that it's that it's, yeah, some days are really tough and it is ah an extra layer on their day-to-day life um And, yes, it's great that they've got each other but it's also like it's a pretty shitty kind of yeah position to be in. Yes.
00:28:05
Speaker
And particularly for you for you and your husband as well, you know, to kind of go, okay, now we've got two kids with the same diagnosis but they're still very different, aren't they?
00:28:20
Speaker
Yes. Yes. In some ways, and I use this term loosely, in some ways it was easier, easier only that you were already educated with type 1 diabetes and what that was.
00:28:39
Speaker
that That was the easier part in that we weren't having to be getting our heads around a diagnosis. But there's another layer to that. It's like how do you check, like I can't imagine having to look at two different, um you know, two different sort of apps, like follow apps. And then you've got, you know, you've got different times of site changes, you know, like it's almost like, yes, it's great that you're educated, but it's also like this, you've got to then double everything.
00:29:09
Speaker
So it's not just, and how do you manage that just in terms of your own, like, like like psychologically of how you're like, okay, well, whose alarm's going off or where's that child and dividing that and thinking, well, Jimmy's kind of he's, he's you know, he's three years in.
Sibling Support and Coping as a Family
00:29:24
Speaker
Not not that he can fend for himself, but you know what i mean? Like you're like, well, he'll have to handle that a little bit. You know, you almost have to put a little bit more, i could imagine, like responsibility onto him because then you've got Dan that needs a little bit more support. it Initially, i don't know, i' just I'm putting words in your mouth there, but I could just imagine that you'd just be like.
00:29:42
Speaker
You're bang on there, yeah. You need an extra set of parents, you know. um We were very fortunate that Jimmy, does cope and has a certain level of independence and responsibility um that he he was able to, i guess, step up to to some extent. um But he he was also a great
00:30:12
Speaker
support for Dan, like, you know, times like the school bus where we as parents aren't there and they haven't yet reached school. So their teachers and their teaching support at school were not there.
00:30:27
Speaker
um You know, Jimmy was able to to give Dan some jelly beans and a few things on the bus and call us because they they have the follow apps on their phones. Yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
for their CGMs um and he was able to call us from the bus and say, this is what's going on with Dan, what should I do? and put it on speakerphone so that the bus driver could hear the conversation as well and the three of them sitting at the front dealing with a hypo while the bus driver's merrily getting the rest of the bus to school. yeah,
00:31:04
Speaker
but Yeah, he he's been very responsible in in taking on a little bit of care for his brother. it's it's i think it's that older sibling anyway. you Like they, regardless of the diagnosis side of things, like what i said before, think those older siblings tend to, you know, because of this diagnosis side of things, I think they just step up and, like, yeah, my Jimmy's I'm trying not to say Jimmy too many times to confuse things, but he's the same. He will, you know, like, oh, if I can't get onto Harvey and I can see something's going on and I know he's with Jimmy, he'll be like, it's oh, yeah, I'm on it, Mum. You know, like I'm, you know, like so, yeah, it's it's it's nice that they so i said they have each other i can ah i can and that you you know that, yeah, Jimmy's got a little bit more experience and a little bit more comfort for you when you're not you're not around. Yeah.
00:32:02
Speaker
How have you managed to sleep at night? Well, you know, they say that a diagnosis is like having a newborn. Well, we you know, we have two newborns. You know, it's not not uncommon for two alarms to be going, um sometimes for completely different reasons. One's that's high, one's low, one's out of insulin or...
00:32:26
Speaker
And, you know, the beeps are the same. um So, yeah you know, who's beeping? Who is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have that when I'm with people that are also like either diabetics or they've got kids. It's like, is that is that you or that me? Or, you know, like it's quite funny. Dan will yell, it's not me. Jim's like, yeah, it's me. And is Dan on a pump?
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, so he was very soon. Yeah. ah The change in the tech in three years was interesting for for the better.
00:33:01
Speaker
um Jimmy was diagnosed on a Guardian Sensor 3, which was the earlier model sensor Medtronic had working with the 780G, and it needed calibrating morning and night with a finger prick.
00:33:16
Speaker
ah So Jimmy did that for the first couple of years of his diagnosis and then the Guardian sensor 4 had come in before Dan's diagnosis. So, yeah, Dan dan did go straight on to a 780G with a Guardian sensor 4 very soon after.
00:33:33
Speaker
So they're that' so they're they're on two different pumps at the moment sort of but they sort of work the same? I'm i'm not familiar with the Medtronic stuff. no No, they're both they're both like identical pumps and identical so sensors. It was just that the sensor model upgraded from the time when Jimmy was diagnosed in 2022 to current day, the Guardian sensor fall.
00:33:55
Speaker
So diagnosed two kids diagnosed, both of you while you were on holidays, both of them while you were on holidays. But yes the good news story is it hasn't stopped you from travelling, has it?
00:34:07
Speaker
No, it has not. All right, guys, I think we're going to stop the episode right here. um i think you could agree that there is a lot to digest with that double diagnosis story there. Liz is actually going to come back and we're going to finish the episode in the next fortnight where she's going to share with us how they are a family, right now a family, doing the lap around Australia in a caravan with two type 1 diabetics.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:34:34
Speaker
We look forward to bringing you the next episode of the Type 1 Club in the next fortnight. Take care. Bye-bye.
00:34:43
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in to the Type 1 Club podcast. We hope you've enjoyed today's episode and gained some valuable insights. If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on all the platforms so you never miss an episode.
00:34:56
Speaker
We also appreciate it if you could leave us rating and review. It really helps us to reach more listeners just like yourselves. For more updates, behind-the-scenes content and join the conversation further, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, the Type 1 Foundation, or visit our website, type1foundation.com.au.
00:35:17
Speaker
Thanks again for listening and we will see you next time on the Type 1 Club.