Families across Australia need your help to live well with Type 1 Diabetes

Families like Desi’s urgently need your support to understand how to live well with type 1 diabetes – will you please help?

In 2012, Desi and her husband, Brad were changing life insurance companies, and needed a health check, including a blood test. It was a test that changed Desi’s life forever.

Desi was 43, a former registered orthopaedic nurse and practice manager, busy mum to four young sons and an active runner. There were no signs that anything was wrong, apart from a lingering viral illness…. and she was developing type 1 diabetes.

Desi was devastated. But her diagnosis was just the beginning.

There are so many families all over Australia right now who need your help to understand their type 1 diabetes and learn how to live well. You can make a difference.

Over the next five years, another three members of Desi’s family were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, including two of her sons.

Connor was 15. He too had a lingering virus. Just four months after Desi’s diagnosis, he suddenly complained of a raging thirst, and lost weight inexplicably. Desi did a finger prick test – and began to panic. It was clear that Connor was having an acute onset of type 1 diabetes.

Eighteen months later, her eight-year-old niece was rushed to intensive care after her acute onset of type 1 diabetes. Then just one week after turning 13, Desi’s youngest son, Tom, received his diagnosis.

Four members of Desi’s family, over five years, had to learn how to cope with type 1 diabetes almost overnight. This is why we need your help.

The whole world turned upside down for Desi and her family. Life became all about decisions, calculations, and how to live well. And right by their side, helping them learn what to do, and how to cope, was JDRF.

Our community education, peer support programs and information services help families and individuals with type 1 diabetes through every stage, and every lifesaving decision, so no one ever feels alone.

With your help, we can be there beside every family until we hear four magic words – we have a cure.

You can help us ensure every Australian diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and their family, can understand, manage and live well with their diagnosis.