Talking to one doctor or healthcare provider can be intimidating. It’s not exactly my idea of “fun” to sit in a stuffy room with a medical professional and discuss various health concerns. But what about talking to dozens of them, all at the same time? Forget about fun, it sounds like downright torture.

Fortunately, “torture” is not the word I would use to describe my experience speaking as a panelist at the ADCES Massachusetts All-State meeting earlier this month.

Rather, words like “empowering”, “therapeutic”, and “reflective” sum up how I felt during the event, and I was pleasantly surprised by that outcome. After all, I had no idea what to expect – I was there sort of on behalf of my job, but also as a favor to a former colleague who was leading a session about navigating young adulthood and diabetes; in particular, what it’s been like to transition into the “new normal” of working from home, relying on telehealth visits, and dealing with record-high levels of mental health crises among the young adult population as a result of the pandemic in the last couple of years.

You know, just the type of light and fluffy stuff people love to spend Saturday afternoons discussing, right? (Yes, that was a sarcastic statement.)

Despite the heaviness of the subject, it was a really positive experience for me because I was able to be completely open about my experiences in a room of surprisingly engaged diabetes healthcare professionals. I say “surprisingly” only because I was speaking to a room of complete strangers who knew nothing about me, but that turned out to be the beauty of the entire discussion – I was a neutral third party whose experience they could learn from and take with them into future appointments with T1D patients my age. Similarly, I was able to draw from my own experiences with healthcare professionals in the last couple of years and elaborate on what’s worked (and what hasn’t), which was healing for me to talk about because as I’ve written about here in the past, I’ve had some less than satisfactory encounters with my doctors since the onset of the pandemic. It was also nice to feel like I was really being heard by these individuals, who reacted to my stories with empathy, kindness, and concern.

All in all, I’m pleased that this speaking opportunity went so well, and I’m grateful that I will have additional chances to be at events like this in the future, thanks to my job and diabetes community connections.