Living with diabetes on your own terms

Living with diabetes on your own terms

When Christel Oerum found out she had Type 1 diabetes at 19 years old, she was terrified. Now, nearly three decades later, her life couldn't be more different. On World Diabetes Day, Christel shares how diabetes doesn't stop her from doing the things she loves.

"I had a lot of classic symptoms. I was tired all the time and I would fall asleep at work. I was also extremely thirsty and had to use the bathroom all the time," she explains. "I was working two jobs, so I told myself it was normal." But when Christel fell asleep at a family gathering for Christmas, an aunt urged her to see a doctor. "My doctor recognised the signs, measured my blood sugar and diagnosed me right there," she recalls.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that causes the level of glucose (sugar) in your blood to become too high, because your pancreas cannot produce a hormone called insulin, which controls blood glucose. People with Type 1 diabetes need to take it every day to keep their levels under control. It's impossible to survive without insulin.

"I didn't know anyone with diabetes, so I thought I'd been handed a death sentence," Christel says. "Fortunately, my mother was a nurse and reassured me that we'd figure it out. I was referred to a diabetes centre where I got educated and started taking multiple daily injections [MDIs] of insulin." One of the most impactful moments in Christel's diabetes journey came from her diabetes nurse, who told her there was nothing she couldn't do. "Within a year of my diagnosis, I was backpacking around India," she tells This Is MedTech.

When Christel took up bodybuilding years later, she found that pushing her body to new limits was affecting her ability to control her blood glucose levels. "Managing diabetes while bodybuilding was extremely challenging," she explains. "There were no resources on how to handle blood sugars with such intense training." Instead of giving up, she decided to create the resources she needed, laying the foundation for her own business aimed at helping others with all types of diabetes to live an easier life.

These days, Christel points out that there are many medical technologies available to support people with diabetes so that they can ensure they're getting the correct dose of life-saving insulin at the right time. Finger prick blood tests are useful, but they can only give a snapshot of your blood glucose levels at a moment in time. The introduction of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), which let you check your levels in real-time via a sensor that's attached to or implanted in your arm, changed all that.

"I love the advancements in diabetes tech," she says. "CGMs have made a big difference in my life. My blood sugars are way more tightly managed." Christel believes that the availability of different management tools, from insulin pumps (electronic devices that release insulin into your body so you don't need to do insulin injections) to smart insulin pens that record and calculate everything for you, is simply amazing.

Her personal preference for MDI over pumps stems from her active lifestyle, which requires manual adjustments that she finds easier to manage with a smart pen. "It's about finding what works for you. Life has to come first, and diabetes management should fit into that - not the other way around."