A Test Strip Story for World Diabetes Day

 

"Hey look- it's a test strip. It's not the kind I use."

 

 

This is a zoomed-in shot, and cropped. The test strip was virtually hidden in the sidewalk crack at the busy amusement park. Yet it caught my daughter's eye.

 

Finding a test strip "in the wild" meant that another person with diabetes had been there.

Whose was it? Was its user still around? Did the blood sugar it recorded require a $4 soda from the snack stand or a break from the rides? Was the person local or travelling? Type 1 or Type 2? Newly diagnosed or an old pro? Comfortable with diabetes care on the run or not?

We had a distinct curiosity about, and sense of kinship with, whoever dropped that strip.

Other people with diabetes, even complete strangers, hold a special place in our hearts.

The same sense of connection fuels my interest in World Diabetes Day. There are millions of people around the globe living millions of very different kinds of diabetes lives. But they're all living them because Dr. Frederick Banting, born 126 years ago today, discovered and bottled insulin.

What, I wonder, are their struggles? Successes? Stories?

Do they think about being part of a global diabetes community, and if so does it give them the same sense of hope it gives us?

It's November...Diabetes Awareness Month! My plan for this month involves stories. Simple, everyday, real-life stories about living with diabetes. I plan to tell them here as narratives, like this one, just snippets of a day with diabetes, and I plan to tell them, or stories like them, more often in the 'real world' this month when friends ask, 'How's it going,' or relatives ask what I've been up to.  



 

 

Hope

It's blue circle day. The symbol was adopted in 2007 by the United Nations to represent worldwide unity in the fight against diabetes. Progress has been made since World Diabetes Day's inception, including better technology, increased awareness, and more organizations at work to help people with diabetes. Those building blocks of progress give me hope.

I even catch myself thinking about the end-game for this whole diabetes thing. It's quite possible that within the thus-far elusive 10 year window my daughter will be able to go about her business with little to no concern about diabetes. The advent of a true artificial pancreas now seems inevitable. Smart insulin and other pharmaceutical advances will make life simpler and safer for people with all types of diabetes. There are an increasing number of paths towards biological cure therapies. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have hope for my child.

Yet for too many people that light is a mere glimmer, if they can see it at all. Parents are wondering how they'll afford the next vial of insulin. Children in third world countries are travelling hundreds of miles to diabetes clinics. Grandparents are choosing between food and prescriptions. Families are suffering physically and emotionally because they do not have access to even the most basic diabetes care: a knowledgeable physician, a glucometer with enough supplies, and the pharmaceuticals they need.

So for me the question becomes, what needs to happen so that all of us are really united in that blue circle of diabetes, so that all of us can have hope? I can't wrap my answer up in a tidy bow for you today, but I can tell you that there is no shortage of organizations at work on behalf of people with diabetes here in the US and around the world:

International Diabetes Federation

JDRF Advocacy

Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition

Diabetes Advocates

American Diabetes Association Advocacy


These organizations and many more (if I've left out one you feel passionately about, feel free to comment below) are finding ways to provide hope for those for whom diabetes is a hardship in ways many of us can only imagine. If World Diabetes Day Resolutions are a thing, then I resolve to find another way to be involved this year in advocating for the basic diabetes needs of all people with diabetes to be met. Everyone with diabetes deserves to have hope.

Hope

Saturday was World Diabetes Day. 

Our family took this picture and posted it on all of our respective social media accounts:



 

 

 

It stood out, it appeared, in contrast to the French flags and Eiffel towers populating our screens. I began to wonder...  Should I have dug up a family photo from our trip to Paris instead?  Should I have kept World Diabetes Day to myself in light of Friday night's terrorism?  Was I being selfish?

 

For two reasons, I decided to leave it:

 

World Diabetes Day is an international call to action to help people with diabetes, particularly those who cannot help themselves.  It's a call to find ways on all kinds of levels, from the United Nations to national governments, to towns, to non-profit organizations to individual actions to bring diabetes education, medication and care to everyone who needs it across the globe.  That didn't feel selfish at all.

 

And the message on our hands?  It seemed appropriate for both occasions and for many more.  In a world where terrorism is increasingly common and where hatred feels impossible to overcome, what more can we wish for the people being terrorized?  The same thing we wish for children who can't afford enough insulin or for places where people are dying all too soon from diabetes: Hope. 

 

 



WDD 2014: A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

That's it.