Life with T2
SPREADING
THE WORD A fortuitous meeting on an airplane of Joshua McCarthy, who works for Fonterra, and a Diabetes NZ staffer has opened doors in his workplace for diabetes education.
J
oshua McCarthy was en route from Hamilton to Balclutha, on the first leg of the journey, when he found himself in conversation with a passenger in the next seat. Both of them would usually keep to themselves on a flight, but the pair started up a conversation and it wasn’t long before they found they had something in common. Josh says, ‘We got talking. I never talk on the plane, and she said she never talks. She was friendly. She told me what she did as a job, and I started opening up to her about my journey.’ He found he was talking to Cara Thomas, Diabetes NZ’s Head of Community Services. Eleven years before starting at Fonterra, Joshua felt something wasn’t right with his health. Due to drinking a lot of water, he was getting up a lot in the night and the broken sleep was making him very tired. Then one morning he woke to find he had blurry vision. ‘I Dr Googled myself, which said I’m either going to die, or I need to check my blood glucose levels.’ Joshua had the advantage of
30
DIABETES WELLNESS | Spring 2024
‘I know what to do. It’s just very difficult to put it into practice. I need to do subtle changes in order for it to be my new lifestyle as opposed to change my lifestyle. I have a 16-year-old daughter and a loving wife as well, so it’s not just me in the picture.’
