The Corner Booth

The most recent annual camping adventure took me up to Interlochen, Michigan for a week and allows me to trade in the real life stresses and online universe for much-needed relaxation outdoors. Here's a Friday Lite post with some snippets of My D-Life Around The Campfire and nearby places. Moonlight, Campfire, & The Darkness Outdoors: This was my 5th year in the past decade on a summer camping adventure, and the the third straight in late July heading up to the northern part of Lower Michigan with friends. But it was my first where I wasn't pumping, but rather endured Multiple Daily Injections. My sugars were pretty steady or even slightly Low a majority of the time, and only a few times did they rise Higher when overeating and not compensating with enough insulin. Daytime was easy enough. But after dark presented some challenges. Being at a Michigan state park helped, as there were lighted restrooms, showers, running water and electricity. Washing the hands was easy eno...

Camping is awesome. I love it. But what's even cooler and more AWEsome is when those summertime camping adventures are all in the name of good causes. Charity. Advocacy. Support. = Good Causes, indeed. Especially when you're talking about Diabetes, or other conditions that need to be cured and can use all of the help we may be able to offer. Breast Cancer and Camping: Our recent weeklong adventure to Michigan was not only a time for relaxing and escaping from everyday stresses, but also a time to contribute to the Breast Cancer Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, which is an event featured on a page of its own - Causes to Care About. This is our camping cause because the trip organizer is one of several of my fraternity brothers and friends participating in the event on Aug. 13-15, 2010. Dubbing themselves Team Sisters, Misters, and Blisters , the group has pledged to walk more than 60 miles each to raise a combined total of $10,000. They're 53% in, and have a ways to go i...

  Our annual week-long camping vacation just ended and I'll be playing catchup for a little while, so I'm tapping some of the archived posts from back in the days when you might have just seen this as The Corner Booth, without a specific D-focus. This one originally appeared March 31, 2007 , but remains relevant today as many studies continue to provide nothing more than a reassurance of what's already out there and known. Not all, but many. Have you observed any particular studies (mice or pigs or otherwise) that might tickle a comment? Let me know, and of course thanks for visiting! Breaking news: "Sedentary behavior linked to high blood sugar." Another one this week: "Active Self-care Improves Blood Sugar Control." Really? Are you kidding me? We had to spend valuable time and resources on studying this? As if no one could have guessed this from talking to a person who's EVER BEEN TO A DOCTOR before??? Or actually lives with diabetes, or kn...

That time has finally arrived. As usual this time every year, it's time for me to unplug and unconnect. Typical regular life duties are being put on hold for a week as we head up to northern Michigan for the annual camping trip. No work meetings. No tweeting. No D-Blogging. Few phone calls. As little stress as possible. There, we'll spend a week in our tents and hanging out in the company of a dozen close college friends over campfires and good times. While it's tent camping, we are within the comforts of a state park. Once our workweek finished on Friday, we headed home to get all packed up before hitting the road on Sunday morning. Our drive is about three hours longer than pretty much everyone else going, as they all live in the Southeast Michigan area where we're from. But now that we reside in Central Indiana, this means an 8-hour drive north along the Mitten State's western coastline with periodic pit stops for us and the dog. The Shadow C...

In preparing for a week-long annual camping adventure that'll take me away from the online universe to campfire connections of northern Michigan, here's a guest-post from a fellow Indiana Type 1 named Megan Bartholomew. This young woman lives in the same county as I do south of Indianapolis, and earlier this year was selected as one of the Indy 500 Princesses for 2010 . Through that role, this 22-year-old Type 1 reached out and touched the Diabetes Community that's so close to her heart. We met up for coffee a month or so ago after the 500 Race Weekend and had a great time talking about any number of topics, and I mentioned that it'd be awesome to have her write here at The D-Corner Booth. She agreed, and so now I'm honored to share her story in what hopefully will be just the first of her entries here. Enjoy!   - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - -  Hi everyone! My name is Megan Bartholomew, and Mike asked me to write a guest blog a couple m...

I've never been a fan of the term "pre-diabetes." Of course, I'm no medical professional. I'm not able to dispute the scientific validity of this term and how it's utilized. Online research tells me that the CDC has reported that one in four people (roughly 57 million people) have pre-diabetes and therefore have a higher risk of developing Type 2 within 10 years. But as a jaded and skeptical Type 1 for now more than a quarter century, I have reservations with this "diagnosis" and how the existing medical establishment throws this around in what I'd describe as a reckless manner. For example, take my wife who was recently told at an employer-offered health screening that she has "pre-diabetes" because of a single fasting blood glucose reading of 113 mg/dL. Yes, that's right. 113. One one three. (Waiting, allowing that number to process...) This is where I let Suzi jump in and tell the story, as it happened to her... The h...

If I had a time-traveling DeLorean, my first stop could very well be Orlando, Florida in July 2011. That's when the annual Friends for Life Conference will be happening. While I hear it's always a great time worth attending, next year is expected to be an even more special time for Adult Type 1s. That is because Jeff Hitchcock, the creator and editor of Children With Diabetes that's been holding the FFL Conference now for more than a decade years, wants to develop a conference aimed specifically at the needs of Adult Type 1s. This is awesome news. But please, don't take my word for it. Please, leave The Diabetic's Corner Booth and travel over to Diabetes Daily where my friend and fellow D-Blogger Scott Johnson has already written about this and is garnering incredible feedback about the idea. The planning and direction is already underway, and with now less than a year to go, deadlines are quickly approaching to get this established. So if you haven't alre...

So, I had a strange dream the other night. As it turned out, this dream came at a time when my blood sugar was running High. Awaking about 3 a.m., a blood test revealed a 350 mg/dL. Trip to the bathroom. Thirsty. So, I had an orange flavor-ice and took a correction bolus. Then, I began reflecting on the nightmarish-vision that had been on my sleeping mind just a while earlier. What if I was buried alive for an extended period of time, without an insulin pump or any insulin? Not only would it suck being buried and all the not-fun issues that go along with that, but I'd also be battling the High symptoms - thirst, urination, slugginess. Not a pleasant times. That had been my dream. Being stuck in a coffin, with a lighter, and no insulin pump. Only on MDI (as I have been now for a few months), but unfortunately I didn't have any supplies. No water bottles or pop-cycles or push-up flavor-ice to hit the spot. Some burning foot neuropathy to go with it. NOT cool. I blame the ...

This post is somewhat overdue, but it's been a couple crazy Fridays in a row... and so it's finally the right time! As you likely know, I had the honor of attending the second Roche Social Media Summit on June 29, traveling to Orlando to meet some of my fellow Diabetes Online Community members for the first time. But before I found myself Leaving On a Jet Plane for that trip, there was some fun "You've Got Mail" action that brightened the day and added coolness to my D-World:   From Boston With Love.. . You may recall that I celebrated my 25 years of Living With Diabetes in the spring of 2009, and was eligible to receive the quarter-century recognitions given out by both Eli Lilly (in Indy) and Joslin Diabetes Center (in Boston). My mom, who has been Type 1 since the age of 5 and has celebrated her own half-century Diaversary, told me about the two awards and suggested I apply. So, last summer I vowed to pursue these awards. Well, it took longer than that and ...

"Diabetes is the only disease that fights with itself." Except for Multiple Personality Disorder, which may have exponentially numerous battles with itself... The comment came Sara Knicks during the Roche Social Media Summit, in a discussion with the American Diabetes Association about how we're all in this together yet it often seems as though this national organization aimed at diabetes seems so very disconnected from our Adult Type 1 community. It captured a mood of the room at the time: that there is a Type 1 vs. Type 2 vs. Every Other D Type Out There mentality, and that the face of the ADA seemed more focus on the Type 2 "epidemic" than any other variety of diabetes - even the Type 1 it was created to focus on. We were discussing those points but also how the ADA and JDRF seem to often be butting heads on fund-raising efforts and event-planning, seeming competitive and mutually exclusive of each other even though we're all fighting for the same ...

This is a longer one, but there's really no way around it. So much to recap, to be thankful for, and to say thank you for. So, that's the focus here... With more recaps and thoughts to come down the road about the second Roche Diabetes Social Media Summit! Who knew a Person With Diabetes could be so happy with blood sugar readings in the 200s?? Well, I am. As are the other three dozen Diabetes Online Community members who came together in Orlando recently for the second summit that Roche Diagnostics put together. A main reason is that it shows that Pharma is listening to what we patients want and don't want, and making changes based on that. It's an encouraging and positive step foward, one that hopefully others start thinking about. This was a followup to the first one in Indianapolis last year ( which I didn't attend ), and a direct result of that conference and feedback from many of the same DOC members who gathered this year. They created a slogan and logo, P...

The second Roche Social Media Diabetes Summit is finished, and it's back to the real world that for me is not D-focused. The pharma giant brought the 37 of us together in Orlando earlier this week, and here's the proof in a photo. This was an awesome experience and my mind is on massive overload, so there will be more updates and recaps to come - but first, must focus on the day job and get some needed work done. In the meantime, here's the group that came together.