Most of us can still remember the name of a stuffed animal we loved growing up. The one that came everywhere, slept beside us every night, and slowly lost its shape from years of squeezing, dragging around, washing, repairing, and loving far too fiercely to ever replace. Some of us still have that same battered, well-loved animal beside us in bed or tucked away somewhere safe. They are valuable because they bring us comfort, companionship, familiarity, and somewhere to place an enormous amount of affection.
That is a much more tender standard than the one I usually apply to anything connected to diabetes. After more than twenty years with Type 1 Diabetes, I tend to think about products through a strictly survivalist lens: What problem does this solve? What does it protect? What burden does it lighten?
Playful, lovable, and free from the usual context of management and necessity, a plushie wearing an insulin pump brings me a kind of uncomplicated joy I had never associated with diabetes. It is easily the least practical diabetes-related thing I own, and yet, it’s one of the most emotionally effective.
Normalizing T1D in the Toybox
For kids with T1D, insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) quickly become extensions of our bodies as we learn to depend on them every day. Yet, the realities of chronic illness are absent from the imaginary worlds we construct through play. We give our dolls siblings, careers, pets, elaborate wardrobes, and chaotic backstories, but we rarely think to include our medical devices and experiences!
Luckily, Type One Style has found an adorable way to change that. With their T1D Animal Family, medical details can become part of the play, too. These super-soft, eco-friendly animals come pre-fitted with realistic 3D-miniatures of pumps and CGMs, giving kids (and let's be honest, adults) a plush companion whose body looks a little more like our own.
The Origin Story
Type One Style began in 2021 after co-founder Emma, who lives with Type 1 diabetes, had her Dexcom G6 ripped off when it caught on her bedding. Frustrated by the limited options for adhesive patches that were both reliable and stylish, Emma and Charlie began designing their own from their spare room. What started with overpatches soon grew into a much broader collection of clothing, accessories, device protection, and other products created specifically for people living with diabetes.
Emma’s firsthand experience with T1D continues to shape the company’s approach. Their products recognize the practical realities of wearing diabetes technology every day while also making room for personality, confidence, and fun. That same thinking eventually led to the T1D Animal Family, bringing familiar pumps and CGMs into childhood play through stuffed animals that can wear the same devices as the people who love them.
Why Stuffed Animals and Play Matter
A 2020 study of 44 children with chronic conditions, including 16 with T1D, examined their pretend-play abilities alongside coping and psychological functioning. Children with stronger, more developed pretend play also showed greater use of positive coping strategies, suggesting that the way children engage with imaginary worlds can be connected to how they process the challenges happening in their real ones.
A second study demonstrated this even more directly. Fourteen children with diabetes, ages 10 to 11, used puppets during a therapeutic education program to explore their experiences with T1D. The puppets helped the children communicate difficulties and emotions surrounding diabetes that could otherwise be hard to express directly.
Together, these studies show why play deserves to be taken seriously as part of childhood with a chronic condition. A toy can give a child a familiar, low-pressure way to express experiences they may not yet know how to explain.
Who Would Love One
The T1D Animal Family could be a thoughtful choice for:
- A child who was recently diagnosed
- A child starting their first CGM or insulin pump
- A child switching to a new device
- A child who has never met someone else wearing the same technology
- A child who gets nervous about appointments, site changes, or other parts of t1d care
- A sibling or close friend of a child with T1D
- A child who already has a favorite animal
- Someone looking for a diagnosis, pump or CGM-start, birthday, holiday, or diaversary gift
- An adult with T1D who would have loved one growing up and/or wants one now.
Brooklynn's Perspective: Meet Ranger
I am now the very proud owner of a Highland cow named Ranger. And yes, I named him Ranger because it suited his rustic aesthetic and because I could not resist the terrible T1D joke about being “in range.”
I’d seen these plushies floating around the diabetes community on social media for months, but I kept talking myself out of buying one, assuming I probably shouldn’t be this drawn to a stuffed animal as an adult. Then my best friend, Natalie, surprised me with Ranger, specifically customized with my exact setup: a Tandem t:slim X2 pump and Dexcom G6.
Natalie didn’t have to guess or look up my technology online because she already knew. Over the course of our friendship, she has paid attention to the details of my diabetes with a level of care I don’t often encounter, asking thoughtful questions and showing genuine curiosity about a part of my life that some people who have known me for years still know very little about. She not only knows the names of my devices, but she also knows what the alarms mean, what frustrates me, what scares me, and what living with all of it asks of me. Navigating all the terminology surrounding T1D can feel like deciphering a foreign language to anyone who doesn’t live with it, but Natalie became fluent in mine. She learned the clinical details and paid attention to the emotional ones because knowing me fully meant making room for this part of my life too... and that kind of effort and care is incredibly rare.
Holding Ranger brought up an unexpected wave of emotion after years of hating my devices and hating how visible they made my diabetes. A year of little conversations with Natalie had somehow been turned into something I could hold. Every question she asked, every time she listened while I explained, and every detail she remembered was suddenly sitting in my hands.
Living with diabetes 24/7 can be isolating in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it. So much of your life is shaped by thoughts, decisions, fears, and responsibilities that the people around you simply never have to consider. I have also spent years trying to find the balance between wanting people to recognize how much T1D affects my life without wanting them to feel sorry for me or see my diagnosis before they see me. For a long time, I assumed there were parts of this experience that would only ever matter to me or could only be understood by others living it firsthand. But Natalie has changed that for me.
She will never know exactly what it is like to live inside my body, but she has shown me how deeply someone can learn when they care enough to pay attention and Ranger is that understanding a physical form. There I was, smiling at this little cow with his tiny plastic pump and CGM and thinking he was adorable precisely because he looked like me.
For the first time, I was actually grateful to be seen specifically as a person with Type 1 diabetes because I was being seen with love instead of pity. Natalie took something I have spent years hating about myself and showed me what it looked like through the eyes of someone who loves me and has somehow made a part of myself I still struggle to accept feel worthy of being known, remembered, and even celebrated.
Ranger will always be my representation of that kind of friendship for me. Our loved ones may never fully understand what it is like inside our bodies, but they can listen closely enough to care about the parts that are difficult, appreciate the parts we are still learning to love and accept ourselves, and make us feel deeply, undeniably seen.
Ranger also made me think about the toys I had growing up. I was obsessed with American Girl dolls, especially the “Just Like You” line, and I would scour the catalogs trying to find the closest possible match to myself. With all the different combinations of hair, eyes, skin tones, and features, finding your match was serious business. Yet none of those dolls ever had the insulin pump I had worn since first grade. Not that I ever expected or wished my toys had diabetes devices per se. Back then, to me my pump was a heavy, ugly piece of equipment I was forced to wear to stay alive. It made me different, and I couldn't imagine a version of it that felt cute, comforting, or worth showing off. I was far more interested in making sure my dolls had stylish outfits, which seems fair, as dresses, jean skirts, and lacy socks are understandably an easier sell to an eight-year-old girl than miniature medical gear.
Looking back, I didn't want my doll to have diabetes because I was afraid that would ruin her outfit or make her look flawed like it did to me. I wish I’d had more resources and opportunities as a kid to reframe how I felt about my body and develop a kinder relationship with it before I learned to hide so many important parts about me. By putting these exact details on a sweet little animal, Type One Style gives kids that foundation early on. They show them that what they wear isn't heavy or awkward, but a normal, lovable part of who they are.
Even as an adult, having Ranger around gives me real comfort. Instead of sitting on a shelf collecting dust, he stays right by my bed at night, and then joins me on the couch for my nightly episode of reality TV to gossip and eat popcorn while I joke to myself that he’s lucky he doesn’t actually have to bolus for the insane amount of butter I put on this popcorn bowl.
If you are looking at the T1D Animal Family for a kid with Type 1, I cannot recommend these plushies enough. Having a toy that wears their exact tech takes away the feeling of being the odd one out and turns medical gear into an ordinary part of daily life. A child can give their cow a pretend site change after a rough morning, or bring them along for support at a doctor's visit. But once that moment passes, diabetes isn't the focal point. He's just a toy they love playing with.
At the end of the day, Type One Style created something far more meaningful than a cute stuffed animal. They made a way for us, whether we are eight years old or full-grown adults, to feel a little less alone with our devices.I’m grateful to Type One Style for thinking beyond everything we medically need to survive with diabetes and creating something that lets us have fun with it, feel represented, and see our devices differently. Most of all, I’m grateful to Natalie for giving me Ranger. He will always remind me that a part of me I still struggle at times to love and accept is something my best friend sees with affection and chose to celebrate.
Want to learn more or support life-changing Type 1 diabetes research?
At Diabetes Research Connection, we fund early-career scientists working on innovative approaches to prevent, treat, and ultimately cure Type 1 diabetes.
Keep up to date with our latest helpful T1D lifestyle guides and research updates by signing up for our newsletter.
Brooklynn Hamilton
Since being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D) at the age of 3, Brooklynn has been a passionate advocate for T1D research, representing the T1D community at many events and media appearances and helping to raise over $600,000 for T1D research. In her role as a T1D Youth Ambassador, she spoke at the JDRF Children’s Congress in Washington, D.C., Stanford University, and Americans for Cures to promote funding for stem cell research initiatives and the NIH Special Diabetes Program. Brooklynn graduated from Texas Christian University in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She is now excited to use her skills and voice as DRC’s Development Coordinator to continue to drive research forward and advance breakthroughs in T1D cures for herself and the millions of others living with T1D.
