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This website presents 100 audio interviews with people with diabetes, members of their families and healthcare professionals.
  New interviews, with family members and healthcare professionals, have been added to the original interviews with people with diabetes. The original interviews can still be found easily by clicking on the menu above or button below.

They talk with passion and humour about their experiences from the late 1920s until the first decade of the 21st century and provide a unique oral history of life with diabetes and changes in treatment over eight decades. 

Their stories are offered as a resource for historians, healthcare professionals, people with diabetes and their families, and all those interested in the ways people remember and make sense of their lives. This resource is available free, but by using this site you are agreeing to our terms of use.  

We provide full unedited recordings, short audio samples, written summaries, full transcripts, an inter-active database, and facilities to search for words, phrases and subjects. The menu also includes a glossary and a page of items provided by the interviewees (Extras).

The transcripts contain notes of slips of the tongue and other mistakes and omissions, but we recommend listening to the voices too, because accents, intonations and emphases convey more than writing.

The website is based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM) and was funded by the Wellcome Trust. It has won Oxford University's 'IT in Teaching and Learning Award' and been chosen by the Wellcome Trust as a 'Research Highlight


Getting Started
The interviews are divided into three categories.  If you want to search one of these and read an introduction to it, then click on your chosen category below.



Interview (random selection)
 


Mary Potter
Born in 1944
Overview:
Mary Potter`s daughter, Joanne, developed symptoms of diabetes in 1978, when she was five. Her GP refused to believe she had diabetes and Joanne nearly died. This traumatic beginning left a legacy of anxiety and anger. Mary noticed that another mother of a diabetic child was more laid-back than she was. She also noticed that when a niece was diagnosed around ten years later, there was much more specialist help and information available. Mary still sometimes accompanies Joanne to diabetic clinics. Joanne hates clinic visits because she feels that doctors treat her like a child and make her feel guilty.

There are also interviews with Mary Potter`s daughter, Joanne Pinfield, and with Joanne`s husband, Nick Pinfield.

  Click [Here] to view
 

 


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