Say it ain’t so

If you follow this blog’s Facebook page, you probably saw the little blurb I put up over the weekend. I photographed part of a page out of Diabetes Forecast, the magazine published by the American Diabetes Association. As I see it, this is a respectable organization; there are no lies, ulterior motives, or deep discounts on snake oil from them. If they say it, I tend to believe it.

But in September’s issue, right there on page 20, was the bold headline that you see above. The paragraph that follows was quite disturbing, and generated a bit of discussion under the Facebook post.

The online version of the story, with the same content but a headline slightly modified to read “INACTIVE KIDS HAVE HIGHER TYPE 1 RISK” is available for all to read — if you dare. With respect to the magazine’s copyright, I won’t copy the entire piece here, but the first sentence just about sums it up:

No laughing matter

This is a joke. It was always meant to be:

This blog’s February 20, 2013 post

* * *

But this is brutally serious. You can do something to make it better:

http://www.StripSafely.com

Diabetes lobbying and my own Fiscal Confusion

If you’ve been paying attention to the big diabetes advocacy and lobbying groups, you know that Congress passed the Special Diabetes Program, also known as the SDP.  This program allocates $150 million of federal funds towards diabetes research.

If you’ve been paying attention to my state Governor, you know that he openly chastised the House of Representatives, specifically one of his own political party leaders, for delaying a vote on the $60.4 billion Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund. “There’s only one group to blame,” he said, “for the continued suffering of these innocent victims.”

If you’ve been tuned into any television, video, or online media as 2012 came to a close, you know about the metaphorical financial precipice from which the United States was about to tumble.  I don’t know all the details, but early morning on January First, we were caught in the middle of a free-fall and temporarily brought us back to relative safety.

Sheltering our children

I made it a point on Friday to make sure I was home in time to see the school bus arrive and for my Kindergarten-age son to step off. I hugged him a bit longer and a bit tighter than usual, and picked him up as he exclaimed that he’s now taller than me.  We looked  at our tall shadows and made gestures that made it seem like our shadows were bumping into each other.

Before long, on the way from the bus-stop to our house, I put him down.  I can’t hold on to him forever.

A reminder of vulnerability

Earlier this morning, the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) reported the death of Miami-area TV news anchorman Joel Connable on its Facebook page.  Being from the northeast, I had never heard of Joel and wasn’t aware that there was even a TV news personality who had Type 1 diabetes, so I quickly turned to Google to find more information.

It’s sad.  So very, very sad.  He got married just two weeks ago, and instead of a honeymoon, his bride is now planning a funeral.  It’s sad when somebody dies, but it really hits home when the person dies because of diabetes.