Hi I am a T1 and have been for 25 years. I work in the NHS and have been fighting for weeks to work from home. We get sent a risk assessment form which was assessed by someone of the sane grade as me in which it sets out section one, which is all people with low immunity either due to their condition or due to medication they take for their condition. These are the people who should get a letter and should be shielding for 12 weeks. Section two is the category we are in and this is the section of people who aren’t at a greater risk of catching the virus but are still vulnerable of developing a serious illness and complications if they do develop the virus. Diabetes after all is an autoimmune disease itself which means your immune cells attack your healthy cells in different parts of your body, in type 1’s that’s your islet cells which produce insulin. As everyone knows diabetics don’t heal very well. So our chances of developing severe complications from Covid-19 are very high and thereby good chance of taking up a bed in critical care. When I was diagnosed my consultant told me that I could end up in hospital with a cold and that’s why sick day rules are so important. As I have got older my diabetes reacts quite badly to common viral illness and the last one in 2017, a tummy bug, in a matter of two days I ended up in a coma with a GCS of 5. My son found me unresponsive. By the time I reached hospital the A&E consultant told my family I may not make it. They were just about to intubate me and at the last second, with tube in my mouth, I made a groaning sound so they stopped. I ended up in ITU and then HDU before getting well enough to be looked after on a normal ward. So I wish with all my heart that someone would listen to our plight and let us protect ourselves at home. I don’t want to sit at home doing nothing, I still want to contribute and work from home but even giving all this information to my manager, my risk assessment failed. I also have high blood pressure and tachycardia along with gastroparesis which makes your digestion really slow so trying to synch insulin with food digestion is very difficult but Libre sensors have been a marvel to me. The government advise that anyone with diabetes, there is no difference between T1 and T2 that they know of so far, should work from home if you can work from home but I wish NHS Management would read that bit and show a bit of care to their staff. I have worked in the NHS for over 30 years and this is how you get treated when you need their help. They just don’t care. It depends which health authority you work in also because I know that all the non-clinical staff at other health authorities in Scotland have been sent home to work. They are supposed to be a caring profession. I really feel for the domestic who was writing earlier because one of our ward clerks had just went off with a cough, so it’s not just the doctors and nurses who are at risk, we all are. I thought their main aim was to stop vulnerable people taking up beds, well I think the NHS management missed that memo, we are vulnerable people and are being FORCED to come to work when we don’t need to as can easily work from home and are very likely to take up a bed. Do the math. Their latest excuse is there is a waiting list for IT to give remote access and the clinicians come first - thought most of them already had remote access and aren’t they the ones you need in the building and not at home. There should be as little staff as possible in the hospital to protect everyone. Rant over.