November is Diabetes awareness month making it the perfect time for my challenge. Diabetes is becoming increasingly common and despite popular belief, type one diabetes is not caused by eating too many sweets or unhealthy food.This condition often comes completely out of the blue and from my time working in the diabetes team at Barnsley Hospital, I have seen first hand the impact that this condition has on children and their families from the moment they are diagnosed. Diabetes impacts every aspect of their life and at present there is no cure.

Imagine wanting a snack and then having to think about more than just what you fancy to eat!

People with type one diabetes have to make lots of decisions before they can have a bite to eat. They have to:

Check their blood sugar

Think about how much they might want to eat

Calculate the amount of carbohydrates in the food

Think about how quickly the food is going to break down in their body

Consider if they plan on doing any exercise close to eating

Take into account their current blood sugar

Only after all of this can they work out how much insulin to give them self, inject it and then wait 15 minutes for it to start to work before they can begin to eat.

This is for every meal, every snack, every day. It’s a lot to take on for any adult let alone children and this is just one part of diabetes!

I want to give back to the children, their families and the Diabetes team who taught me so much during my time working with them. The team were recently able to take a number of the children on a fun activity day which was a great success and allowed the children to meet others in the area who also live with diabetes. Any money raised will go towards more day trips for the children and help give their parents a well earned rest!

I have manage to recruit a friend, Lucy, to join me for my challenge. We will each walk a combined total of 2 kilometres - 1k each on ours hands on the 12th of November!

Any donation would be greatly appreciated, Thankyou