The Corner Booth

We all ended up in Las Vegas, but had no clue any of the others would be there. Thanks to the Diabetes UnConference , I met up with two other type 1s from the Indianapolis area. One of them happened to be a longtime 50+ year type 1, someone I'd never met or heard of before. The two of us had never heard the other's name before, but at this event with almost 100 others, we found each other and made a connection that will stretch beyond Vegas and come back to our own community here in Indiana. To me, that's the power of the UnConference. This is what I want others to know the most, aside from what I've already written . That it wasn't about Diabetes Topic A or Topic B. Instead, it was about each of us. It was about connecting with others. Finding those conversations and being able to talk some initially, and then being able to continue that conversation outside of the conference setting itself and eventually back to our own corners of the world. Power of th...

I am very sad, and it's all because of this Diabetes UnConference in Las Vegas. Hi everyone, this is Riley. And yes, I did say sad... because it took my daddy away for several days and he didn't take me, and now all he's been talking about are those "awesome people" he saw in Vegas. He returned home early in the week, and even though we were very happy to see each other, I knew he had been with other dogs. I even saw them in a picture. There was Becca and Norm, and I have heard there was talk of many other D-dogs and even cats there at the UnConference. Since getting home, Daddy has been sneezing and coughing quite a bit ( he says he has a head-cold, but I'm convinced it's because his body couldn't handle the excitement of seeing me again... ). And he also says there's a bunch of #VegasDust in his eyes... That brings me to you, my first chance in quite a while to write a blog. So here I am: the Riley Dog!!! Daddy has been pretty quiet a...

It's not often that I struggle to find words to capture a moment, but that's exactly what I've been struggling with since attending the first-ever Diabetes UnConference this past weekend. Held at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from March 13-15, this event brought about 90 people together for an in-person peer-support event unlike anything our D-Community has seen before. The non-profit Diabetes Collective put this on, under the direction of advocate Christel Aprigliano , the visionary behind this. And without a doubt, everyone involved in the UnConference hit it out of the ballpark. There were nearly 2,000 years of combined diabetes experience in that room. Some were familiar faces, who've been part of the DOC for a long time, from both the U.S. and other parts of the world. But there were also many who hadn't been to something like this before, and said they weren’t even aware of the online community but had found their way there because a friend had ...

Today is my 31st anniversary since my T1D diagnosis as a kid. And as I've done for the past number of years, I went to a diabetes party this past weekend. It was the Beta Cell Bash . Yep, that's seriously the name of it. Actually, it wasn't specifically to mark my diaversary . It just happened to fall at this time of year. Once again, the B-Cell Bash was a... bash. Meeting up with other fellow pancreatically-challenged peeps is a fun experience, and this past weekend was no exception. This yearly get-together was the 4th one that I'd been to and its the brainchild of Mr. Michael Schwab , a local Indy guy who's now in his fourth decade with T1D. Sadly. there were no sightings of hoverboards or flying DeLoreans, and Marty McFly wasn't playing his guitar anywhere near the stage. Still, it was a fantastic time. I have no clue how many fellow people with diabetes were actually there, but I know that I saw at least a half-dozen and conversations with a numbe...

Yes, Bigfoot does exist in the diabetes community and as you may have heard, he lives with his family in New York. Our friends at diaTribe recently published a comprehensive interview with the mysterious man who'd long been rumored to have secretly created a homemade artificial pancreas system: D-Dad and husband Bryan Mazlish. Now, Bryan's teamed up with two fellow diabetes dads and big names in the community -- Lane Desborough, former chief engineer at Medtronic, and Jeffrey Brewer, who led the JDRF for four years until last summer -- to found a new diabetes startup called Bigfoot Biomedical , aimed at advancing connected closed loop technology. Bryan serves as chief tech officer. Today, we're thrilled to share, for the first time anywhere, the full inside story of how "Bigfoot" began his work many years ago -- before there even was a #WeAreNotWaiting call to action! Bryan's wife, Dr. Sarah Kimball , is a longtime type 1 who works as a pediatrician ...

We went to the Dominican Republic recently. This was a work-related trip for Suzi, and it was pretty much an all-expense and inclusive trip for roughly four days to the resort community of Punta Cana. I'm so very lucky because I was able to just go along for the ride. I've never had a passport, and so this was my chance to snag one and use it (grew up in Detroit, and have visited Canada and Mexico in the pre-9/11 days, but never needed a passport since I'd never entered international waters like this). I did all the diabetes-related packing of supplies and prep, and after weighing all the tropical temp issues that could arise, decided to only take one opened bottle of insulin. I kept the insulin in the mini-fridge, rather than inside my meter case pouch at room temp where it typically lives. All was good for the trip, and my insulin pump worked well along with a few scattered MDI instances when I didn't want to be connected by the pool or ocean. I didn't nee...