The Corner Booth

As I've shared in the past few months, I've been training for my first-ever Tour de Cure that takes place on June 8. Along with an expected turnout of several thousand others, I'll be starting out on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and will journey around a 31-mile area on the western edge of Indianapolis before ending up at the 2.5-mile track where the Indy 500 just took place. I've registered for the 50k (the shortest possible option), and my route is supposed to take about 2.5 hours if I go the minimum 6 mph they say I should. I'm planning to take it slow but steady, and finish the ride before my legs fall off and I crumble to the ground in a rest-craving ball of flesh. In other words, this is going to be a major physical challenge for me. My two-wheel of choice: the black, 12-speed Huffy mountain bike that I've had for about 15 years. Older ride, but it does the job just fine! We have cleaned it up, bought new tires and tubes, found a bike pedometer and

By Amy Tenderich, DiabetesMine Founder and Editor Originally published at DiabetesMine on May 28, 2013 Holy Diabetes Innovations! I am happy to announce that a small group of entrepreneurs and researchers including several parents of kids with type 1 here in San Francisco are tackling the diabetes data dilemma head-on, having just launched a new startup called Tidepool . A few months ago, a gentleman named Howard Look reached out to me after hearing about the DiabetesMine Innovation Summit and a call for D-data standardization and open model of diabetes care. Turns out Howard is a self-described "Silicon Valley tech guy" with experience leading software, product and user experience teams. His daughter Katie, 13, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes two years ago. "I've recently decided to do something about it full-time, and have been connecting with several like-minded folks. I applaud the work of of folks like Benjamin West and others that are 'hack

Well, here we are - my first post for Diabetes Blog Week to run over here at The Corner Booth . Don't worry, I haven't been slacking. At least not completely. Most of my D-writing these days can be found over at DiabetesMine . You can make sure to catch some of my week's earlier posts - on a Fun Petition and Memories - over there. Plus, there's a whole slew of them (to the tune of 130+ every day!) to read, too! Since I wanted to make sure to tackle one of the topics that we won't be featuring there, my little corner booth online seemed like a great place to post it! So, here we go... Diabetes Wild Kingdom Wildcard What is the ideal diabetes service animal? Think beyond the obvious and be creative in explaining why your choice is a good one. For example, maybe a seal would make a good service animal - it flaps its flippers and barks every time you get a good blood sugar reading! ( Thanks to Tristan of Based on a True Story for this topic sugges

 Many may know Actress Elizabeth Perkins  best for her movie and TV star roles going back to the 1980s -- particularly in the movie Big where she played the love interest of Tom Hanks. More recently she's been in some TV hits like Weeds on Showtime and the ABC sitcom, How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life . But not all may realize she's a type 1 herself since 2005, diagnosed as an adult and once she had already made a name for herself worldwide. And in November 2012, she teamed up with Sanofi to create a new diabetes documentary aimed at the importance of having a support network when living with the Big D. She stars as herself telling  her diabetes story , and how she found the courage after her diagnosis not to hide her diabetes but make it a "natural" part of her life. She was diagnosed with LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults) at age 44, after what she describes as a slow onset, and Elizabeth says it took more than a year for her s

For the second year in a row, I attended the Lilly Diabetes Blogger Summit in Indianapolis last week and experienced up close and personal the place that's been making the insulin that's been keeping me alive for almost 30 years. This was the sequel, so to speak, of the first Blogger Summit the pharma giant held in 2012, hosting a dozen diabetes bloggers at the company's huge headquarters in Indy (where I live). But unlike the intro event last year that was more of a "get to know you," this second summit dug a little more into what Lilly Diabetes is doing "behind the scenes" and their efforts to better listen to our D-Community. Lilly could do a lot better in sharing its work with PWDs. They seem to understand that, and I think they would earn a ton of good will if they were more communicative about what they're doing to help us pay less for insulin, for example. In any case, those able to attend along with me April 29-30 were: Scott Ben

When I was growing up, I believed there were many things I couldn't do because of my type 1 diabetes. Be a professional athlete. Fly planes. Go to the moon. Join the military. Even grow up to be a "real" news reporter out on the streets covering current events. Honestly, I never thought I'd get even get married. All because of my diabetes. Keep in mind, this was the 1980s and early 90s. And this was just my experience, largely based on the state of affairs at the time and what I was repeatedly told by my own medical care team. Like anything in the diabetes world, I'm sure others' experiences vary. I remember hearing the same type of phrases at each doctor's visit: "you could get this complication or that complication." When I hit the typical teenage rebellion years and stuck my head in the sand on all things diabetes, that sentiment grew even stronger when the message became more clearly: "You ARE going to have complications