Sustainable prospects Project Development Week 2

Sustainable prospects Project Development Week 2

In June 2019 I started my MA with Falmouth university as part of an accredited education programme.

Friday 4th October 2019

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Sustainable prospects Project development week 3 – https://www.bambino-art.co.uk/sustainable-prospects-project-development-week-3/

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I became diabetic when I was pregnant with my eldest child, when I was 18 years old. The day before his 18th birthday, at the end of September, I made the 4/5 hour trip from Cornwall to London to have an insulin pump fitted. I woke up on the morning of the drive, for the 10th/15th/20th day in a row with my phone beeping at me telling me I had low blood sugar (I have a continuous glucose meter fitted that tells my phone what my blood sugars are all the time), and I became overwhelmed with the desire to capture this journey that had taken 18 years for me to get to. I never planned on sharing this project here at all, it was just for me, but I realised this journey is just one of the many personally journeys I have been on, and will continue to go on, that continue to inform my work in sometimes obvious, and sometimes totally unseen ways.

This day. My children learnt that sometimes, even mothers need to take the day away to look after themselves.

The last time this stomach won’t be full of tubes, and needles, and tape.

Listening to the Messy truths podcast ( from this weeks ‘reading’ list for the MA)

Motorway lunch break with the British journal of photography & my healthy(ish) M&S lunch

Carb counting, it is literally the most tedious thing I have ever had to do, and thought it is never ending, is …. exhausting.

Collecting insulin from the hospital pharmacy

Insulin pump

The whole set up

Lunch break. Medical students were talking about how much diabetic people cost the NHS and what should or shouldn’t be funded for us.

I had forgotten I had something ‘plumbed’ into my stomach , so as I went to pull down my jeans felt like I was ripping my intestines out through my belly button. Dropping all my bag, phone, everything, on the floor.

First CGM graph post pump

First supper.

I set up all the lighting and handed my mother the camera (she had come & met me in London to make the journey back to Cornwall with me)  it’s so interesting seeing myself through my mothers eyes, given it’s usually me showing other mothers how they see their children.