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. 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
And 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
You've probably seen it before — it circulates widely in the diabetes community, on Instagram, in articles, cited by major organisations. It's commonly attributed to a 2014 Stanford estimate suggesting people with T1D make around 180 additional health-related decisions every day compared to people without diabetes — roughly one every five waking minutes.
Honestly? Some people in the diabetes community have questioned whether the number has a truly solid research basis, and I think that's a fair point. It's not a precise, peer-reviewed figure you can pin down cleanly.
But here's why I still used it — and why it still matters to me.
Numbers like this do something important: they give shape to something that is otherwise almost impossible to explain. The mental load of T1D is real, it is relentless, and it is largely invisible. Whether it's 96 decisions or 180 or somewhere in between, the point is that it's a lot — layered on top of everything else in a life. Decisions about insulin, food, activity, timing, correction doses — running as a constant mental equation, weighing dozens of factors at once, where getting it wrong can land you in hospital.
180 is a number you can hold. You can picture it. You can feel the weight of it. And for those of us living with T1D, no number will ever fully capture it — but having one at all helps other people begin to imagine what they can't see.
That's why it's on the lightbox. That's why it's on the tally counters. Not as a scientific claim, but as an invitation to imagine.
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.