The Corner Booth

Goodbye, Mary Tyler Moore. Our Diabetes Community is mourning the loss of a legendary type 1 champion who changed the world of advocacy, awareness, and research-funding for T1D. Mary Tyler Moore died on Wednesday, Jan. 25, at age 80 of pneumonia, with her family by her side, according to media reports . She made an impact worldwide through her TV acting career, most famously on the Dick Van Dyke Show and then her namesake Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s. For those of us in the D-Community, her tireless advocacy work changed the landscape on what the public knew about diabetes, and the money raised for research for better treatments and a cure. Diagnosed at age 33 back in 1970, Mary entered the D-Community the same year her namesake show was launched, as well as the same year the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (JDF) was founded. Aside from the glass ceilings she shattered for women in those days, she broke through many diabetes stereotypes -- from being diagnosed as an adult with w...

I'm no stranger to having crazy dreams that tie in with diabetes, sometimes in wicked weird and scary ways. A number of years ago, I recall dreaming that I was buried alive in a coffin and trying to escape when suddenly, a scary hybrid-freak spider appeared -- complete with infusion set spider legs! ( Thanks again to Chris Sparling , a brilliant writer who has provided a number of nightmares through the years... ) Anyhow, my most recent D-dream involved what seemed at first just an every-day happening gone awry. No memory remains of what the entirety of the dream was about, or how I ended up in the particular moment that I did. But the brunt of what I'm writing about involved me standing in front of a bathroom mirror, probably in the evening post-dinner hours. Apparently, I had eaten a salad with spinach in it with my dinner. And as sometimes happens, a tiny little piece of that spinach snuggled itself into my gumline in my front teeth. No big deal, right? We...

This is a cautionary note to anyone who happens to be time-traveling to, from or during 2017... Sorry to say, Time Traveling Explorers, this is real. Yep, it's not a joke.  Even though the Chicago Cubs seriously did win the 2016 World Series (not kidding), this too is also a part of our current reality. While many joke about this being a plot from reality TV, and it's really not far off... this is not a scripted make-believe item. This is not #FakeNews (which is a thing all in itself at this period in time). Beware. For your own protection and sanity, it's probably best if you just avoid the years 2016-2020 and check back on the state of the world (assuming it's still around) after that. Make sure to be careful, too -- wouldn't want you to land back here in an even more wicked-whacked future to find some crazy Back to the Future 2 alternative timeline where bullying billionaire Biff Tannen lives in a casino resort tower and is in charge despite b...

If you were hoping to buy a new Accu-Chek brand insulin pump from Roche Diabetes Care, you're unfortunately out of luck. There's now one less player in the pump market as of 2017, as the diabetes device company that makes the popular Accu-Chek brand of meters, test strips and insulin pumps has made the decision to stop selling pumps here in the United States -- at least for the time being. We learned about this when a CDE contacted us after an Accu-Chek rep apparently told her that Roche had "dropped out of the U.S. pump market," and this educator was surprised not to find any details on the company website. " This is not the way other pump companies have handled ceasing operations... and I wondered why.  Do you have any back story?" she wrote us. Reaching out to Roche, spokeswoman Anne Gill confirmed that the company is not accepting any new pump customers as of Dec. 31, 2016, and explained: "At the end of the year, Roche Diabete...

Some of you may know from following us on social media that I've been under the weather over the holidays. Yuck! For the past month, I've had a cold and persistent cough that have been messing with my diabetes management. With it being the start of a new year, this of course has meant that any resolutions for getting my blood sugars more in range and "starting off on the right foot" have been back-burnered. The slot for that endo appointment I had scheduled for the first week of January came and went, pushed back until February when hopefully all signs of this "real person sickness" (on top of D) will vanish. But in the meantime, it's been a matter of dealing with higher BGs, ineffective Afrezza use thanks to my incapability of not coughing while trying to inhale, and just a rundown, lack of D-motivation mood overall. Blah... I hope you don't mind me venting, but I know we gall go through this stuff, and the myriad of formal " How to Take Care o...