How it started, How is it going
Being Diabetes Month in November, I want to thank everyone who has reached out, and a real big thank you to Brampton South MP Sonia Sidhu, a diabetes champion for over 10 years promoting awareness, education and testing.
As well as the Executive Director of Diabetes Canada Glenn Thibeault. They gave me the opportunity to attend their day on Parliament Hill to tell my story, and I feel even closer to a family that will help promote education, awareness, and testing.
And thank you to MP Fares Al Soud of Mississauga Centre for your support and attendance, I enjoyed our conversation.
And what can I say about the amazing testing team.
Also, thank you to the tremendous outreach of people that actually have been recently diagnosed or have had it for several years and even people I think they may have it.
Please check out the complete story here and thank you Dani Dube for writing up such a terrific story.
While I am happy, I have “beat it” and literally turned the clock back 10 years, like Benjamin Button healthwise ( maybe more ), I must still maintain and stay on top of my new lifestyle. It’s the best I’ve felt the last two years in my entire life.
More energy, more alert, more sharp than achieving twice as much as what I did before, if that’s possible.
Part 2: After the Crisis: How a Hospital Stay Rewrote Tim Tierney’s Health Story
This is the second part of a two-part series that explores the Ottawa City Councillor’s type 2 diabetes diagnosis for World Diabetes Awareness Month.
It was only a day before Christmas in 2023 when Ottawa’s Beacon Hill-Cyrville Councillor Tim Tierney checked himself into the Ottawa Hospital’s General Campus Emergency Department.
He hadn’t been able to hold anything down for days, and he was sweating profusely — and the more this went on, the more this worried Tim.
Almost as soon as he arrived, nurses took him in and ran a battery of tests, signaling that whatever Tim was experiencing was something very serious.
When the tests came back, they showed that he was completely dehydrated. “I was connected to IVs to stabilize,” Tim says. “I wasn’t able to consume solid foods.”
Tim didn’t know it yet, but this was the start of his diabetes journey.
November is World Diabetes Awareness Month, and according to Diabetes Canada, a Canadian is diagnosed with one of three types of diabetes every three minutes (type 1, type 2 or gestational).
With a 5.7 per cent prevalence rate, NCD-RisC, a network of health scientists around the world, reports that Canadian women are ranked 15th globally when it comes to diabetes, with Canadian men ranking 35th with a prevalence rate of 8.1 per cent.
According to the latest International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Diabetes Atlas (2025) report, over 11 per cent – or 1 in 9 – of the world’s adult population (20-79 years) is living with diabetes.
However, by 2050, the IDF projects that 1 in 18 adults, or about 853 million people globally, will be living with diabetes. That’s a 46 per cent increase.
And over 90 per cent of people living with diabetes have type 2, which is driven by socio-economic, demographic, environmental, and genetic factors, as per the IDF.
The key contributors to the rise in type 2 diabetes include urbanization, an ageing population, decreasing levels of physical activity, and an increasing overweight and obesity prevalence.
A CHANGE OF MIND
A twinge of hope came for Tim when, finally, after about a week, doctors were able to get Tim to eat solid foods again.
“Eventually my system started to process the foo,d but I wasn’t able to have any kind of movements for many days,” he recalls. “It was very scary.”
Then on day six, when Tim was being discharged from the hospital, he was told that he was to immediately go to the diabetes clinic.“They wouldn’t give me more details but said this is a must,” he says.
“From the minute I checked into the hospital days before Christmas, they told me to eat well, only eat healthy and to stop drinking, because that would cut most of my sugars.”
Tim didn’t think much about it until January his phone rang and he picked it up. Voices on the other end of the call, being staff from the diabetes clinic, told him they needed him to visit the clinic. So, he obliged.
When he did, staff ran more tests.
“They said, your blood sugar is 30 — still,” Tim says. “You definitely have diabetes. We’re not sure if it’s type 1 or type 2.”
To find this out, they had to monitor him for six weeks, which they did through a device they placed on his arm that was connected to his phone. This would monitor his blood sugar levels in real time.
He was also given insulin pens, which he was to take daily. The time to turn his life around, he was told, started now.
“Before that, with my vision loss, my lethargic behaviour — at times, erratic behaviour — I started to calm down, but it required daily shots,” Tim explains. Then the six week was up.
“I was quite anxious to find out and I was called in and they said, ‘You are type 2.’”
His doctor told him that with this diagnosis, it was important that he continued with the lifestyle changes he had adapted. This would be his new life.
For the last two years, Tim has been doing just that, and successfully, too.
“My vision eventually corrected itself back to 20/20 where it was before the episodes took place,” Tim says. “I started feeling better. I didn’t have to use the washroom two or three times, sometimes seven or eight times a day. I had realized that I was sick for a long time before this even happened. I wished I would have known sooner.”
Over the next five months of daily insulin injections and Metformin medication, he was able to get his A1C number down to five (the normal range is between 4 and 7).
“There were ups and downs,” he says. “Sometimes I would go too low and sometimes too high. It was a series of alarms going off on my phone on a regular basis — even during council meetings — and I hid this from people because I was ashamed.”
Then after the five months, Tim switched over to the GLP-1 medication and is down to taking only one shot a week. He says he’s the healthiest he’s been in decades.
A CHANGE OF HEART
The reason Tim has decided to come out publicly about his diagnosis now, he says, is thanks to advocacy groups, and realizing just how many people live with type 2 diabetes and still don’t know it, or how it affects their lives.
“I’ve discovered there are many politicians, sports figures [and others who] lend their names to this for education purposes, and I want to contribute,” Tim says. “I want to make sure that we do more in the way of screening and advance for prediabetes so no one has to get to this state.”
According to the IDF, over 4 in 10 people globally are unaware that they have diabetes.
But since Tim received his diagnosis, it’s given him the knowledge and tools he’s needed to live his newer, healthier lifestyle.
He will, however, have to maintain this momentum — and it’s something he says he’s happy and willing to take on not only for the sake of his health, but for his family as well.
Part 1 – How it started
Click to download part 1 Print edition
It was 2023 when Tim’s vision started to blur but he brushed it off as a simple fact of life. Everyone’s eyesight changes eventually, he thought, and glasses would fix it.
Despite that, however, it didn’t stop him from playing the sports he loved like hockey and soccer, which was also a way for him to manage his fluctuating weight.
Tim has always struggled in that department, so he’d do anything he could to shed pounds, including diets like Keto.
As time went on, though, his eyesight kept getting worse, getting to a point where he had no choice but to wear magnifiers at 4 times the strength.
He became more lethargic, and his energy plummeted. His stomach acid burned constantly, and the acid reflux grew so bad it felt like his throat was on fire.
All this worried Tim enough to see his doctor.
One blood test and a glucose test later, Tim got his diagnosis: Type 2 diabetes.
“It was a major wakeup call, and it helped me change my life,” Tim says. “I’ve had many people concerned about my health, but rest assured that after this reality check, I knew I had to make some major changes.”
It’s been two years to the month since Tim’s diagnosis and the start of his transformation journey. Despite his open and honest approach to his life and work, he’s chosen to keep this part of his life private – that is, until now.
Tim was put on medication, which also meant injecting himself with insulin daily, and in four months he lost 50 lbs. Shortly after, he was switched off the insulin to GLP-1 medication, which he now only to takes once a week.
Type 2 diabetes cannot be cured, but he knew medication alone wouldn’t be enough to help him manage his chronic illness, so he made some dramatic lifestyle changes.
Since then, he follows a fitness regime, eats a very controlled diet and has even cut out alcohol.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
November is World Diabetes Awareness Month, and Tim’s story is just one of the 3.8 million stories among Canadians who have been diagnosed with diabetes (or about 9.6 per cent of the Canadian population).
And according to Health Canada, it’s estimated that by 2031, this number could increase to about 4.2 million, or 12 per cent of the population.
Looking closer to home, Diabetes Canada reports that 31 per cent of Ontarians live with diabetes or prediabetes. By 2034, that number will climb to 33 per cent, or over 5.7 million Ontarians.
Diabetes is a complex and round-the-clock condition that affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life.
In fact, Diabetes Canada says that people with diabetes are over three times more likely to be hospitalized with cardiovascular disease; 12 per cent more likely to be hospitalized with end-stage renal disease; and almost 20 times more likely to be hospitalized for a non-traumatic limb amputation compared to the general population.
Diabetes can also result in other serious complications like strokes, heart attacks or vision loss.
WHEN WE STAND TOGETHER
Canada is the birthplace of insulin. The medicine was invented in 1921 by a team of Canadian researchers at the University of Toronto, led by Frederick Banting, Charles Best, J.J.R. Macleod and Jame Collip.
Despite this major accomplishment from 105 years ago, Tim says he thinks Canada can do even more to find something that will help both type 1 and type 2 diabetics, and part of that is the country’s continual investment in important research.
“I never understood what diabetes even was and how much glucose affected everything from weight to mood, vision, digestion and sleep,” Tim says. “Diabetes is so misunderstood and, I’m no preacher, but if people take the time to learn more about it, I know it could persuade people to get tested and possibly diagnosed. Once you know what you’re dealing with, your life can — and will — change for the better.”
TIM’S “WHY”
Since Tim’s made the tweaks to his lifestyle, his eyesight has come back to his original 20/20 vision and, he says, he’s never felt better.
“I’m the healthiest I’ve been in my entire life. I’ve literally turned the clock back 10 years,” Tim says. “I’m happy to say that as of today I’ve pretty much beat it but — with a big but — it requires me to not slip back into old patterns. I will have a very healthy and full life and I want to take this opportunity to be a public advocate.”
Tim is also going to be a grandfather ( along with his wife Grandma Jenny) for the first time in March at the age of 51 and is incredibly excited. He says he wants to continue to be the healthiest version of himself for his family’s new arrival.
“I can’t wait to meet my grandchild,” Tim says. “And I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to not only show my grandchild how important it is to take care of yourself and your health, but also how much of an inspiration they have been to me and my health and just how much power they and their generation can have to influence change.”