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Monday 28 July 2014

Position Vacant


Position Vacant: Diabetics Wanted! 
Exciting New Work Available in our Growing Company 'DiabetesCorp'

Who We Are:
DiabetesCorp is a worldwide company, whose stocks and shares are growing every day. 

Our company is a very busy, fast-paced company that's sure to keep you engaged, as no two days will ever be the same, regardless of if you attempt to structure them the same. We have been assured by all our employees that they are never bored.

We are offering a very exciting, confusing and painful position in our global group. Full-time hours are required as we do not offer part-time. Working hours are 168 hours per week from Monday to Sunday inclusive and you will always be on call. You will not get weekends or holidays. We do not offer maternity leave and will ask you to increase your workload once we find out that you are pregnant. Once signed, working contracts are void only by death.

Applicants can be of any age, race or nationality. We pride ourselves on our anti-discrimination policy and we are an equal opportunity provider.


Role Requirements:
To be considered as a successful applicant you will need to possess a hard-working attitude, a willingness to learn and strong self-motivation skills

We require the following to be considered for the role:
  • Maturity beyond your years
  • Excellent maths skills
  • Medicine degree
  • Comfortable around needles and blood
  • Able to handle criticism and stupid comments in a calm and collected manner from everyone you have ever met once they know you work for Diabetes Corp and complete strangers who have no affiliation with the company
  • A sense of humour
  • Able to work on minimal sleep
  • Extremely alert and self-aware at all times
  • Multi-tasker
  • Ability to think on your feet

Position Discription:
Your role will be as a 'Person With Diabetes', the most essential role to DiabetesCorp. You will be required to check blood sugar levels, count carbohydrates and inject insulin several times a day to maintain your job function properly.

A few times a week you will be required to take control of emergency situations. The very nature of the emergency situation will make you feel weak, tired, confused, disorientated, shaky, sweaty and will affect your vision and hearing.

At the end of each days' work, your superior will rip up everything you have done and ask you to repeat the exact same work the next day. This will go on forever; however please note that no two days work will ever produce the same results, keeping you busy and amused.

You will have a meeting at minimum once every 3 months with a company medical official where your progress within the company will be rated.

Very basic hazard training will be provided briefly as your role is very prone to safety issues and injury is not uncommon. 

You will need to supply your own large handbag to carry around all the job-specific supplies.


We Offer:
  • Mental anguish, stress, anxiety and depression
  • the flexibility of multiple office locations, or you can work from home or anywhere else you go as the job travels with you
  • On your initial start up with us required items such as glucometers will be supplied, but all refills and running costs will be at your own expense. You cannot claim these on tax as a work-related expense
  • Great career progression - starting with microvascular complications and working your way up to macrovascular complications. 
  • A Kellion Victory Medal to commiserate 50 years of service
  • Great, friendly and supportive team environment
  • Dental scheme*

We offer an attractive remuneration package costing you between $1000 - $10000 and up every year

If this sounds like a role that would interest you please email us at thisjobreallysucks@curediabetescorp.com.au

*Due to recent policy changes the dental plan is no longer available


Monday 14 July 2014

I Spy With My Little Eye...

....diabetics. Everywhere I turn.

It's National Diabetes Week this week. We wouldn't have a national diabetes week without diabetics, and I seem to have run into a lot of them this week. One of the best things about having diabetes (look at me go - saying there's good things involved with diabetes) is meeting other diabetics. Getting to know their stories. No two stories are the same.

Lately, I seem to be meeting them left, right and centre. It gives me such a buzz every time, knowing there's other people walking around with broken pancreases.

I was at Garden City the other day and had just sat down to my extremely fatty, carbohydrate loaded lunch - the kind of lunch that would give my endo a coronary just to see the number written down in the carb column. I had just bolused when I heard a distinctive 'beep' coming from the table next to me. There's no mistaking that beep - the beep of a glucometer, springing into action.

My head instantly snapped over towards the source of the sound, and I saw a girl probably just a bit older than me stashing her meter away in her bag. I think I kind of just sat there in a happy daze as she pulled out an insulin pen, dialed up the number and proceeded to give herself the good stuff. "Look! Another diabetic" I basically punched my fiance in the ribs getting him to spot the other diabetic. Her husband, or partner, or brother or whoever he was must have overhead me, or otherwise noticed me staring weirdly at his wife, partner sister or whoever she was to him.

I guess the smart part of me was a little slow off the mark, because I know its rude to stare when you're doing your diabetic business. So I declared myself: "I'm diabetic too! Sorry, I didn't mean to stare. Its nice to know you're not alone." He nodded at me, as she had already begun eating. "It's ok, she feels the same way too."

As I left, we exchanged a friendly, 'in the club' smile.


Yesterday, the first day of National Diabetes Week, I was standing in a line for some delicious crepes at the Abbey Medieval Festival. Wearing a deep blue Medieval Dress, my purple people eater pump, Vernon, was clipped onto the top of my dress...I didn't think it would be very ladlylike to go fishing about in my bra to bolus. Pumps must be some sort of beacon for other pumpers...next thing I knew I had another young lady in front of me saying she "liked my pump",  as she pointed out her own purple Medtronic pump.

As we stood and waited for our crepes we swapped diagnosis stories and dates. We found out we had gone onto pumps at nearly the same time. Eventually we got our crepes and parted ways to enjoy the festival - but not without first wishing each other good BGLs for the day.

After the festival I came home to a facebook message from someone I knew a long time ago, who had just been diagnosed with T1D recently. I hadn't spoken to this person in about 6 or 7 years, but wanted to ask me some advice after finding out through a mutual friend that I had had T1D as well for the past few years. And that's the thing with diabetics. We reach out to each other, constantly, and I have not met a diabetic yet who isn't happy to help.



For me, it isn't National Diabetes Week. I'll leave that to the Diabetes Organisations. For me, it's National Diabetics Week. I'm going to celebrate all the amazing people who live with diabetes every day of their lives.




Tuesday 1 July 2014

The Cronut of all evil

I have blogged a few times about how ignorant comments made about diabetes or to a diabetic about their condition can make people with the condition feel.

Most things, whilst I can get upset, I can politely discuss with the offending person because I know a very large part of what they have said comes from misconceptions made worse by the very wrong public perception of diabetes.

Then there's The Paramount Coffee Project, who came in with fully loaded bazukas and blew all other ignoranases clean out of the competition. The fact that I am still cranky enough the next day to write this is testament to the anger that pulsed hard through my veins.

I opened up my facebook newsfeed yesterday to see a post from the Paramount Coffee Project being passed around in diabetic circles. They had erred harshly on the side of "how is being this horribly ignorant and rude even possible" with their post. They had created a secret menu item that was only available if you asked specifically for it - prior knowldedge only kinda deal. Which is a great marketing strategy. Unfortunatley their marketing genius obviously used up all his genius on the secret menu idea and had a severe case of brain fart when coming up with the title and marketing catch phrase of this secret item.

They called a ridiculously delish looking cronut topped with affogato and some other fancy thing I can't remember 'Diabetes'. Yes, Diabetes is what they named their dish. The cronut they had pictured was very soft and looked like heaven for your mouth . Diabetes does not look like this. Diabetes looks like fingers covered in red and black pinprick marks. Diabetes looks like an alien insulin pump canula stark white against pink flesh. Diabetes looks like bruises, blood and needle marks. It looks like dark circles under your eyes and worry lines on parents' faces.

There's infinite amounts I can say about how naming a dessert 'Diabetes' is just plain wrong and should never have been suggested or followed through with in the first place. Comments were made about how there is no way they would ever call a dessert 'SIDS surprise' or 'Cancer Cake' (N.B. - I fully understand how serious these are - this is for example only) - because diabetes isn't recognised as being the serious disease that it absolutely is.

After the shock of the name, I read the description, which ended with the phrase 'So come in and ask for diabetes today'. This was the part for me, that made me wish all sorts of evil things on this establishment. NOBODY - I repeat NOBODY would EVER EVER EVER IN A HEARTBEAT ask for diabetes. NOBODY does this 'to themselves' willingly. I don't ask for needles, sleepless nights, hypos and hypers, fingerpricks in the blistering cold or anything else that settled into the spot where my defunct pancreas resides when diabetes wriggled it's way into my life.

Thankfully, the DOC was all over this. I think this post was averaging 3 tirades per minute about the seriousness of what they thought was a 'joke'. People posted links to tribunals to make official complaints, tagged Diabetes Australia and all sorts of fun things to help with the message that this was not even a little bit o.k.

Unfortunately for the establishment, this was all going on whilst the 'creative genius' behind it all slept soundly. The post was removed today and a belated apology issued. I don't know how many phone calls they recieved this morning. I feel sorry for the staff, who might have had to deal with eventuated threats from parents that they would bring their 5 year old with Type 1 in to the store so the workers could explain to him that some cronut he had never eaten was the reason why he has to inject insulin for the rest of his life. For Paramount's employees sake, I hope they left the phone off the hook today.


Power to the DOC (who I can see are still worked up over it this morning based on the posts and jokes being made about Paramount). I hope I never see anything this disgustingly ill-informed again in my life.