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The Lloydminster Lions Club, along with Saskatchewan Health Authority and Primary Care Network, are hosting a diabetes education night.
The free event will take place at the Legacy Centre on May 11 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
The goal is to showcase what’s new in self-care, diabetes monitoring and technology such as insulin pumps.
“It’s kind of an open house for everybody to come and learn about the new technical stuff and new projects that are happening in diabetes,” said Brent Smithson with the Lions.
Medical equipment suppliers will showcase different devices for Type 1 and 2 diabetes.
“In the past, when we put this event on, we had 100 to 150 people come through and watch the different presentations and the different technical groups,” said Smithson.
“It’s not just technical stuff, there’s nurse educators who can answer questions.”
The event is well-timed as Diabetes Canada reports diabetes rates are on the rise across Canada.
There are roughly 386,000 Albertans living with diabetes and about 113,000 in Saskatchewan.
About 11.7 million Canadians are living with diabetes or pre-diabetes—a condition that, if left unmanaged, can develop into Type 2 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is a genetic disorder that often shows up early in life, and Type 2 is largely diet-related and develops over time and can be treated with medications, weight loss, exercise and healthy foods.
People like Smithson with Type 1 are usually dependent on injected or pumped insulin to maintain their blood glucose levels, but new technologies are changing that.
Smithson will be at the event to share his own good-news story after living with diabetes for 44 years.
He no longer has to take insulin multiple times during the day like his wife Katherine does, thanks to a transplant of islet cells that produce insulin.
“It’s been awesome. I had my last procedure on Jan 25. I am off insulin,” he said.
“We’re going to start a group for Type 1 diabetics, so we can all get together and talk about stuff. There’ll be health people involved with it. That’s where we can spread the word.”
Smithson says common side effects of having diabetes over a long period of time are bad circulation, kidney failure, heart disease and nerve damage.
“Some people can go 40 years and not have any side effects. It depends on the person, their genetics,” he said.
Before his islet treatment, Smithson says his main symptom was “unrecognizable” low blood glucose levels.
“You can go to bed or to work and all of a sudden your blood sugar would drop extremely. What could happen is you can go into insulin shock,” he said.
Smithson used to wear a device tied into his cell phone and his wife’s cell phone, so if his levels cratered, she would get an alert from his sensor.
