The attendance to the event this year was SPECTACULAR, and, as usual, the JDRF chapters and volunteers did a great job with the logistics.
My first two session where "Real Life Situations" discussions with 9-12 year olds who either had diabetes themselves, or who where the siblings of children with diabetes. In both sessions we broke into smaller groups and went through a series of prepared scenarios and questions. Everything from bullying to forgetting supplies.
Near the end we re-assembled and compared notes.
My initial impressions where how incredibly smart and "plugged" in ALL of these young people are. Of particular note where the siblings - very much in tune with their family member's situation. I walked out of the second session both impressed with all of their abilities and knowledge, and quite sad at the reminder that such young people need to deal with such a topic.
I am SURE I was not even 1% as diabetes aware as these kids when I was diagnosed at their age.
After a great lunch talking to a bunch of families affected by diabetes, I was in a session with Joe Largay from the UNC Diabetes Care Center. The session was about diabetes and sports, and, as Joe is my diabetes care provider, thought I could contribute to this presentation.
I hope he doesn't mind, but I wanted to share two slides from the presentation. The first one shows a study that was done that had participants finish their exercise session with a 10 second full on sprint. I was AMAZED by the post 2hr mark difference in BGs:
As we know their can be TONS of other factors involved here... but still... I am found this very interesting.
The second slide shows the active times of insulin. I, for one, SWEAR that insulin is no longer active in my system after 2 hours. Swear on it.
Obviously I am wrong:
The blue line is Regular insulin, the red the Humalog, Novolog type products that we almost all use. At the 4 hour mark there is about 30% active insulin left.
I am not sure how this related to "non synthetic" insulin, but it is making me think long and hard about some of the pre-exercise temp basal start times I use.
The biggest thing I walked away from following this event, was how truly the experiences and stories are among ALL the attendees.
We ALL have high BGs.
We ALL have low BGs.
We ALL fight with certain foods (pizza, cereal, pasta, potatoes).
We ALL fear hypoglycemia.
We ALL struggle at times.
We ALL hate diabetes.
And, most importantly and assuredly, we are ALL in this together.
Thank you JDRF for hosting me, and keep choppin'!!!!
