19 Years of 20 with Type 1 Diabetes

This video was put together by Kayla.
She's had Type 1 diabetes for 19 years and is a member of TuDiabetes.com

I think videos like this help me put a face to the very real disease. It's easy to get lost in the numbers and the vastness of diabetes, but what it really comes down to is the hefty impact on every individual's life.

I'll be sharing more of these as I encounter them. There's just certain things about diabetes that are just better understood visually.

Diabetes Mine and Six Until Me for Medical Blog Awards

Hey everyone! It's a new year and things have been super busy since. I know, I know, the lack of updates are inexcusable... but I'm trying to work on that. I'm still amazing at how some people manage to post almost everyday! Especially when they have a busy profession topped with something called diabetes management.

Well I'm here to share with my readers that 2 of my good friends and favorite bloggers, Amy Tenderich and Kerri Morrone, are now finalists in the Medgadget Medical Blog Awards! If you haven't seen them already, both of them are directly linked to on my "Blogs" section on the right side of this blog.

Diabetes Mine

Since I nominated her, I'll just post up what I wrote for the nomination:

"Amy Tenderich's Diabetes Mine continues to be a vital resource for anyone who is affected by diabetes. Regularly updated with content, Diabetes Mine is the hub and destination for diabetes news and discussions over controversial matters; all while remaining a down-to-earth blog about daily living with diabetes.

I believe that the online diabetes community would agree with me that Diabetes Mine should rightfully be nominated for the Best Medical Weblog and Best Patient's Blog categories."

Well there you go people... now go vote for Diabetes Mine for the Best Medical Weblog!

Six Until Me

I have also always been a fan of Kerri's blog since I started reading diabetes blogs. Her natural way of sharing her daily experiences have helped me see some of the reality of diabetes. The only way to understand Kerri's blog is to actually go and visit Six Until Me. So check it out on your way to voting for Six Until Me as the Best Patient Weblog!

Until Next Time.... stay safe!

Can Diabetes Screening be Harmful?

I hope all of you are having a great Christmas season. I spent my Christmas here in Boston to avoid an expensive flight home to L.A. Oh well, I'm ready to kick off the new year anyway.

I was searching for some diabetes blogs when I came across this transcript of a radio broadcast on NHPR titled: "Diabetes Screening Isn’t Always Beneficial"

In the report, a researcher states that "one of her concerns about diabetes screening is the potential rush to medicate." Though I find myself agreeing that premature medicating is certainly a cause for concern, I was still rather upset with a previous statement that we should be pursuing these screenings only "on the basis of having good studies that show that we help them in terms of making them live longer or live better."

I think most would agree that detecting signs of diabetes early certainly wouldn't do any harm.

She does go on to say that "the symptoms themselves lead people to raise the issue with their doctors and get the condition identified in a timely manner." But I would contend that waiting for symptoms to become an issue big enough to bring up with your doctors is a bit too late. I know in the case of type 1 diabetes, those symptoms are NOT anything anyone would wish for. I would think that for type 2 diabetes, the long-term affects of long-term exposure to high blood glucose is definitely something people would also want to avoid.

The way I view this is that screening for diabetes will help raise awareness in those who don't have it yet. If and when they do develop diabetes, they will at least be more prepared than having no exposure to what diabetes is.

Stay Warm, Stay Happy

Well, we've had a few snowstorms in the past week and Boston is freezing cold. As tempting as it is for a Southern Californian like me to naturally run out into the snow and make snow angels wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts, I've come to learn of the pain that the cold and wet brings afterwards.

So here's a few random articles and posts I found about staying warm and staying happy for someone living with diabetes in a cold environment.

Andy Bell from dLife's Blogabetes talks about how Exercising in Your PJs can help you stay warm and active during the days nobody ever leaves the house.

A link from My Fall From Grace's Denise talks about how bundling up in the cold actually makes a difference because "Chilling the feet lowers the immune system"!

...and I know all of you are wondering: the happy space heater above was found on Faces in Places.

A Simple Way to Explain What is Diabetes

I stumbled upon this explanation of diabetes management on Scott Hanselman's blog where he uses the airplane analogy. I thought it would be pretty helpful for people trying to understand the delicate balance of testing, eating, retesting, dosing insulin and testing again.

Scott has type 1 diabetes and is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, so it's understandable that he'd come up with a way to explain it quite thoroughly.

If you still don't get it, maybe this image I whipped up might help...

what happens when taking too much insulin after a big meal
(source: dLife.com)

The 2007 NoNaBloPoMo Award

Yeah, I know I'm kinda late, and this is semi-lame...
...but I still couldn't resist!

E-mail me if you want one tailored for your own blog too.
Congrats to everyone who gets to sport the real deal!

Your Stories Matter

AmyT at Diabetes Mine started a post about Feeling Displaced which turned into a heated discussion about the attitude people with diabetes have online.

Well one of the responses got me thinking...

Terry: "When you find us tugging on people's sleeves and bitching out loud to non-diabetics on a constant basis about how bad we've got it or how misunderstood we are, THEN you can call us cry-babies. Otherwise we're just our own little club with our own language and concerns. Let us have our whiny fun."

Terry makes an interesting point.

As a non-diabetic, I never ever cared to know what diabetes even was. But stumbling upon Diabetes Mine and countless others has opened my eyes to something that's actually a BIG deal. Do you think people would care about the AIDS epidemic if they didn't talk about it all the time in the school system? Do you think that finding out someone had Cancer would have the same shock if it wasn't always perceived as so "deadly".

There's a problem with diabetes awareness because it is both an epidemic and a very deadly disease yet it hardly gets the attention of something that is either.

All it took was 1 guy traveling the world with a drug-resistant strain of Tuberculosis to grasp the nations attention in fear. Yet something like diabetes doesn't even need to be spread, it doesn't discriminate, and can affect virtually anyone.

People just don't seem to care if they don't think it ever affects them... and that's a deadly misconception about diabetes. I'm always grateful to have found the online diabetes community and everyone's contribution in helping me learn more. Your every day stories are reality. That's a reality that helps remove the ignorance that keeps the rest of us oblivious (until it's too late).

So until a real cure comes around... keep sharing, crying, laughing and whining to your heart's content.