Thank you, Mr. Prowten.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Juliette Benoît. I'm 17 years old, and I'm from L'Assomption, Quebec. I've lived with type 1 diabetes for almost five and a half years.
My life changed when I was 11 years old. I was diagnosed shortly after Hallowe'en. It is quite unusual for a child to ask to stop trick-or-treating to go to the bathroom.
I was thirsty and hungry, but the more I ate, the more weight I lost. I had also lost my energy and zest for life. As my family really started to worry, my parents took me to the hospital. I remember the cold walls and the staff trying to reassure me, but I was rather annoyed by all the questions I was being asked. Finally, they put three words and a number to my symptoms: “type 1 diabetes”.
After that, I took all kinds of training to tame the monster that was inside me. I thought it was rather strange to see my mother, father, step-mother and step-father sitting around the same table trying to make jokes to lighten the situation.
Before I knew it, I was at home, 11 years old, giving myself injections and trying to survive it all. The child I was was being asked to be an adult, to be strong and to hold it together. The diabetes diagnosis was really what I thought was the worst for a child. I was told I had to give myself shots several times a day and stop eating candy. That's really how I saw my disease.
Fortunately, thanks to research, I now have an insulin pump that allows me to administer insulin without injection and a continuous blood glucose reader that allows me to know my sugar levels faster and without injections, in addition to allowing me to adjust my insulin doses more easily.
That said, it's not a cure. These devices make my daily life easier, but I still spend many hours a day caring for my diabetes. Imagine, before and after eating anything, before, during and after physical activity, when I'm not feeling well and at many other times, I have to check my sugar level, calculate the carbohydrates of what I eat and adjust accordingly.
That's why Bill C-237 is so important to me. The research needs to continue in order to find ways to achieve a genuine cure. Canadians with diabetes need support from the federal and provincial governments to make insulin pumps and continuous blood glucose monitoring systems affordable. Diabetes is a very expensive and difficult disease to live with.
We need help managing the stress and mental burden of the illness, and we also need it to reduce the stigma. It's very important that people stop asking me if I have diabetes because I ate too much sugar, for example. This is an annoying remark that all type 1 diabetics hear on a daily basis.
At 11 years of age, I became a mini-adult, but more importantly, a warrior. I have become a symbol of strength for all type 1 diabetics. Now we just have to hope that the bill to create a national diabetes framework will pass so that real action can be taken.
Thank you for your attention.