The Corner Booth

On a recent drive home from out of state, I happened to hit a stretch of road construction. The interstate was closed down to one lane, with two lanes as well as an entry ramp merging traffic into the single lane. As my car slowly moved through the clutter, I came to the road crew... Milling around on the side of the road in between the orange barrels. One guy in an orange hat and vest was sitting on a guard rail, hunched over to see his phone in the sunlight. Clearly, they weren't doing what I thought they should be in repairing the road. I bitched out load. WHAT. THE. HELL. YOU ARE ALL STANDING AROUND OR SITTING THERE PLAYING ON YOUR PHONE, WHEN PEOPLE ON THE ROAD MUST DEAL WITH THESE HAPHAZARD, NON-SENSICAL LANE CLOSURES!?!? For a moment, I thought about pulling my car off to the side and getting out to confront the apparent non-working construction crew. Then, I though about what I wasn't seeing. Maybe there was more to this story than I knew. By chanc...

Scott Johnson’s left shoulder was bothering him. Really bothering him. "I couldn’t remember a specific incident, but was sure it was just a stubborn basketball injury," said Johnson, a longtime type 1 for more than three decades who blogs at Scott's Diabetes and has worked within the diabetes space for many years . But after months of physical therapy with no progress, and even what he describes as "negative progress," Johnson was diagnosed with adhesive capsulitis , better known by most people as frozen shoulder. This is one of those lesser-known diabetes complications, one that doesn't get discussed much in comparison to vision loss, nerve damage, and a host of other very scary ones. But it's a complication that can be painful and life-altering, and isn't always easy to recognize when we might just equate it to "the wonders of getting older." Overall, it's not really on the radar unless you're personally experie...

Meet George Huntley, a longtime type 1 who you can pretty much think of as a "professional volunteer" in diabetes advocacy. OK, we made that title up, but it's apropos given what this Indianapolis D-peep has been lending his free time and passion to a huge array of advocacy pursuits since the early years following his T1D diagnosis in the mid-1980s. He moved up through the ranks to top leadership positions with the American Diabetes Association, and went on to help create the Diabetes Leadership Council in 2013. That's all just the diabetes side of George, who is originally from Baltimore but has been in Indiana for two decades and is quite the interesting guy. His professional resume makes a good read -- listing an eclectic array of roles from IT consulting and mortgage appraisals to life sciences to working at an 80s and 90s startup making computer game simulators, being part of a heavy machinery company's business which included overseeing a box-m...

This is a story we wish didn't need to be told. By now, no one should be surprised by the high cost of insulin and how broken the drug-pricing system is in this country. In late 2016, we shared a story about the human cost of unaffordable insulin. Fortunately, the woman highlighted in that story was able to find help, so there was a positive ending. Sadly, that's not always the case. Some of you may be aware of the story of Shane Patrick Boyle , who died in mid-March 2017 as a result of not being able to afford or obtain insulin. He isn't the first, and won't be the last, and the facts that it's 2017 and we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world makes this even more of an outrage. It's unacceptable, and something has to change! Remembering Shane Patrick Boyle We never met Shane, nor did we connect with him online in any way. But he was one of us . A member of our Diabetes Community, someone who had lived with ty...

Another year with type 1 has come and gone. For those keeping count, I'm now at 33 years with T1D. And for those who've been following along over the years, you may recall that I self-designated March 10 the date a number of years ago, because I really don't know the exact date other than it was Spring 1984 when my diagnosis came along. So, here we are one again. Woo, freakin', Hoo. I'm not one to really "celebrate" having this chronic condition for so long, but rather I more mark it with a head-nod and drink to the fact that I've managed to survive another year without falling flat on my face and staying put in the ground thanks to D. Sure, there's the whole hopeful mantra of You Can Do This these days, but the fears still exist for me that my time could be closer than I'd like, due to this disease. Not yet, Hoskins. Did I mark this diaversary in any special ways? Not really. Though, I did drink some orange juice. No, not be...

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...