How Do You Put 28 Years Into a Cabinet?
Or: what happens when you try to make the invisible visible
Last year, I was commissioned by Sanofi to create an art piece about life with Type 1 Diabetes. Something that could sit in a room and speak — to people who live it, to healthcare professionals, to loved ones, to anyone passing by.
I thought I knew what I was doing. I've been living with T1D for 28 years. I know this condition.
But the moment I tried to translate that experience into a single object, something became very clear: Type 1 Diabetes is not one story. It's hundreds, every day.
Why a cabinet?
I needed something worn. Something with weight. Something that looked like it had been around — because the condition has been around. I eventually found an old, sturdy, worn-out medical cabinet, and it felt right immediately. Not polished. Not clinical. Real.
Inside it, I tried to capture what I know so well but rarely get to say out loud: the relentless, often invisible reality of living with T1D. A dense, minute-by-minute record of time and effort that rarely shows from the outside.
The three levels
I organised the cabinet across three shelves, each exploring a different angle of the experience.
The bottom shelf
The bottom shelf is about the 24/7 nature of T1D — even while we sleep. A pillow rests on water. The water is never still, never settled, no matter how hard we try to manage things. Badges float on the surface — a “stay positive” badge, an ambulance, a flame. Playful on the surface, but each one carrying something heavier underneath.
The middle section
The middle section is about time and technology. The clock keeps moving — because the condition keeps moving — regardless of how good our tools get. Next to it, a lightbox with the words “Type 1 Diabetes, 180 extra decisions…” sitting on foam bricks (Note, November 2026: this figure isn't backed by evidence. See “About that number” below.) The bricks give it weight. Because it deserves weight.
The top level
The top level is about reflection and community. A wooden disc, engraved with words between the tree rings — choices, forces, care, all accumulating over a lifetime. A mirror the same size reflects it back, and reflects you too. I wanted whoever looks at it to feel part of the conversation. On the right, a soft flame toy covered in tally counters — all set to 180. The flame connects everything: the badges below, the idea of time, the slow record of something burning quietly in the background. Two lanyards hang at the back — the blue circle, the sunflower — our community, our symbols.
Back of the cabinet
At the back of the cabinet, I ventured into writing for the first time. A short piece that tries to connect all the dots:
Type 1 Diabetes
layers lived,
minute by minute,
ring by ring
choices, forces, care,
hundreds each day,
countless in effectrings widen, narrow drift
sometimes off-center,
sometimes crackedit shapes us
and we are more than itfrom the outside
normal, invisible
inside
only we know —
a dense record of time —
understood without words
by those
by those
on the same journey
About that number: 180
Note, November 2026: The 180 figure is not backed by evidence. It has been used widely by NGOs, organisations and the diabetes community, but there's no study behind it. Kamil (@nerdabetic) explains it here.
The cabinet was made before this became public knowledge. I still believe, or would like to believe, that it carries weight: the weight of the many daily decisions we all make around insulin, food, activity, timing and corrections. Probably more than 180 on some days and fewer on others, depending on the situation. But we need to get the facts right, and this number isn't one of them.
What the process taught me
Making this piece made me reflect — really reflect — on 28 years in a way I hadn’t before. I kept coming back to the same thought: T1D is profoundly individual. Shaped by culture, access, age, body, circumstances. One size does not fit all. Not in treatment, not in experience, not in how it shows up in a life.
And yet, there are common threads. The invisible labour. The weight of decisions no one else sees. The way a single meal — something as simple as a slice of pizza — can turn into a hours-long calculation.
That tension — between the shared and the deeply personal — is what I was trying to hold inside the cabinet.
The piece was presented at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference in Liverpool, UK, in 2026 (#DUKPC2026), which felt surreal and right at the same time.
Thank you to everyone who gave feedback along the way — my family, the diabetes community, old art college friends, healthcare professionals. Thank you to Fables and Fire for helping bring it together. And a huge thank you to Becky and the Sanofi UK team for the trust, the creative freedom, and for keeping lived experience at the centre of this from day one.
If this resonated
The Diabetic Survivor makes diabetes awareness products designed by someone who has been living with T1D since 1997. Every design starts from the same place this cabinet does — trying to make the invisible visible.
- Diabetes Does Not Define Me magnet
- Dead Pancreas Gang Hoodie — for the community
- All My Diabetes Stuff Bag — for all the kit that goes with the condition