theBetesNOW Event.

We hosted our first type 1 event over the weekend and it went very well except for the car being stolen. Well sort of stolen, I tell you about that tomorrow, what was really important was connecting with others who share the experience of type 1. Those connections go a long way to making the journey more bearable. So we hosted a little get together for folks living in the local area. A word that hear means Philly suburbs.

I was a nice group of about 20. Some we knew from people from CWD’s Friends for Life in Orlando and others were new friends. We watched a few BetesNOW clips and then I briefly introduced three new type 1 things that I thought were cool. Regular readers, like friend of the Blog Penny, may have seen some of these and I hope I didn’t bore her with re-runs.

For the official record the 3 cool things were:

Number 3 #DSMA The weekly twitter chat for folks with diabetes. Wednesdays at 9pm Eastern. You don’t need to be a Twitter pro. In fact I’m a twit at Twitter but even I could figure out how to join in with theses instructions.

Cool thing # 2 has to be the recently announced in Europe but not yet blessed by the FDA iPod Blood Glucose Meter from Sanofi-Aventis & Wavesense.

And the coolest thing I have discovered about diabetes recently isn’t a thing. It is people, Canadians mostly but they're people too, in a group called Connected In Motion. I found out about them when Jamie emailed to RSVP for theBetesNOW event. It seems she travels from Philly to Canada to do stuff with these guys. They are hard core nut cases and I mean that with the greatest respect. Kids with type 1 grow up to be adults with diabetes and if these folks are any indication they grow up cool. See for yourself.




After babbling a little I managed to get out of the way and pointed out that before the kids can grow up to drive up to Canada and slide down snow covered hills in their shorts they need to go to school and be safe.

At this point Kate from the local ADA chapter rescued the group from listing to me anymore and talked about their Save at School program. The ADA has wonderful resources to support schools and families. Kate did a very nice overview of these and she had some backpacks for kids. Excellent! Thanks Kate.

As a little aside about how great a school can be our daughter's school nurse came to the meeting because, well, she is awesome. The Bryn Athyn Church School let us use their building for the event so big shout outs to both.

Speaking of awesome Ginger Vieira my friend from the DOC came up from DC to share some of her experiences with the group. Ginger worked through barriers to achieve her goal. Specifically she is a champion, drug tested, power lifter. The means she can easily snap me in half but she only uses her powers for good.

She talked about overcoming social resistance to her ambition to become a lifter at well as the very real challenges of type 1 and celiac. She balanced her conversations with parents, teens just starting with competitive athletics and a adult marathoner. She did this with grace that transcended athletics engaged the rest of the room. Quality work.


It was a good event. Thanks to everyone who participated.