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Category: Diabetes Awareness

Met A Co-Worker With Diabetes

Chris Stocker

At my old job I talked and communicated with a lot of other diabetics, but I didn’t actually work with any other diabetics.  At one of the places I do on-site consulting for 3 days a week, Volvo Aero Services, I have been introduced to 2 other diabetics already.  This is a great feeling.  The first person I was introduced to, I already knew about because I had spoken with them via e-mail a few times to get them help with their strips and supplies.  The coffee is in her office so I see her multiple times a day(I’ve cut back to 5 cups of coffee a day).  The other person I wasn’t formally introduced to, but this is how it happened.

Before lunch one day, I headed into the bathroom to wash my hands.  While in there I saw this guy pull out an Aviva meter and check his sugar.  I saw a not so happy look on his face.  He then proceeded to take out a piece of paper which looked like a sliding scale for his correction, plus meal time bolus.  After a quick calculation he was drawing back a syringe.  This whole time I am just washing my hands, glancing over.  Probably the longest hand wash in history.  At first, I was a little hesitant to ask any questions, because I know not all people are willing to discuss their diabetes.  So, I decided to mention my diabetes first and see if he would open up.

I looked at him and just said, “my blood sugar was 195, so I’m going to eat a small lunch to try and bring it back down with a little correction bolus.”  He looked at me like I had 3 heads!  I followed that with, “I’ve been diabetic for 6 years, so I understand the lunch time finger pricks”  He opened right up to me about his diabetes.  Basically he explained that he has had diabetes for 10 years and that he was in a denial for about the first year and that he hasn’t been able to manage it that well.  I gave all the best advice that I could that you have to just keep on pushing.  Your not always going to figure out your diabetes, but you can get it right as often as possible and that is the best you can ask for.  I explained to him to not get discouraged when he sees a high number because it will stress him out and keep it high.

I gave him my contact information and let him know where my desk was if he had any questions or problems with his diabetes.  I also gave him contact info to a few support groups that I knew about and have previous attended.  I really hope that he decides to go, because he seemed as if he needed a little additional support for his diabetes.

How many of you work with other diabetics?  Are they part of the D. OC as well?

Why There Will Never Be a Cure

Chris Stocker 4 Comments

This is a conversation that I had today at lunched.  Now, some of you may agree and some of you will disagree, strongly.  The discussion was brought up about the $100 million Obama is going to send to the care of Haiti.  The question was posed to me, “Doesn’t that piss you off that they send $100 million to another country, and that money could be spent on diabetes research?”  Now, I didn’t know how to answer this question at first.  Of course I don’t want to see anybody have to suffer, but I also see the side that my tax money could go to something like research instead.  So, my answer was, “well, there will never be a cure.”

And then the conversation went on with my explaining why, which I will here as well.  And it can be summed it very easily.  You think we are in a recession now?  Find a cure to diabetes and see what kind of recession we hit.  How would scientists that spent their whole life searching for a cure and doing studies about diabetes get a paycheck if there was a cure?  How would they pay their bills.  How would the stores they shop at be affected.  How would the people that work for diabetes companies and products make a living?  It would hit our economy harder than just about anything.

Do I hope for a cure, of course!  Do I still donate funds and do volunteer work, of course.  But realistically, no, I don’t think it is likely.  There will be advancements in the management of it and there will be tools that may make it easier to live with diabetes and maybe even ways to rid yourself of all complications, but never a cure.  Companies can still make money off of advancements, but not off of a cure.

But like I said before, this thought will not stop me from doing what I can to help find one.

Do any of you share this same feeling?

Do the People Around Me Have Diabetes?

Chris Stocker

There is so much on tv tonight, I’m not going to know what to watch.  The Panthers game is on at 7, Oregon – Oregon St, the Bill-Jets, college basketball game, just too much to manage all in one night.  I wonder how many people in those games are affected by diabetes.  Have you ever thought about that while watching tv or people watching while out?  Since I’ve been unemployed I go to a lot of coffee shops, primarily Barnes and Noble and when I need a quick little break I just do a little people watching and I always wonder if they have diabetes or know somebody with diabetes.

It affects so many people in this world, but how many directly around me.  As I am typing this, I am at Barnes and Noble now and watching some guy count carbs on a calculator.  I wonder if he is doing this because he has diabetes, or he is just a healthy eater and wants to know how many carbs he is eating.  I think about a lot of weird different things now, and that makes me think also, I think I’m just weirding myself out with all this thinking stuff.

Well, I need to go think about more things, like where I’m going to get the money to pay my bills before I get back to the 9-5.

Take care.

My Diabetes Has Been Easy As To Manage As Of Late

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Controlling my diabetes over the last few days has been…. easy.  I don’t think that I have ever said that before, but it has been.  I’ve been eating not that great, but have been counting carbs almost dead on because I have had only 1 or 2 sugars over 200 this whole week.  I did this before and as soon as I made a comment about it my sugars went off the charts for about a week straight, so I have contemplated writing this or not because I don’t want it to happen again.

On the other hand, it feels so damn good to be able to say that it has been easy.  I test, I eat, I test and it’s still normal.  No infusion set mess ups, no low reservoirs when I am not at home, no running out of test strips, no low battery warnings on the pump, I can’t complain at all!  In fact, it even let me meet a new diabetic today. I was at Starbucks (since I’ve been unemployed the last week I go to coffee shops and do work) and someone saw my insulin pump and told me that their wife was diabetic and was thinking about switching to an insulin pump and he hasn’t talked to a pumper face-to-face yet, so it was a great help to him.  Thank you diabetes for giving me this opportunity to help somebody out.

I have not won the so-called war against diabetes yet, but I am sure kicking the $&!# out of it right now.

DRI 2.0 Connecting the Community – My 2 Cents

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

dblogI was excited for a while to attend the Diabetes Research Institute’s 2.0.  This conference shows me that the people working towards a goal are finally listening to us web diabetes bloggers.  The list of attendees was amazing.  Just to name a few, Kerri Sparling, Manny Hernandez, Allison Blass, Scott Strumello, Gina Capone, and Sara Knicks.  This was just a one day conference and I unfortunately not be at all places at once but here is my recap of the event.

The day started off great.  The free coffee was spectacular.  Morning started off with finally meeting Manny.  What a great guy he is.  Just as nice and genuine in person as he always has been online.  We briefly discussed how awesome it is that the DRI is connecting with the diabetes community and not just speaking with doctors and researchers.  Manny Hernandez_Chris StockerManny was also very helpful in giving me some key insight about Cobra and certain people that I should speak to in order to get some better information about it.  I told him that with not working at the diabetes company anymore, it felt weird to be at a conference as an attendee and not behind the booth working it, I actually liked it better.

After the breakfast, or lack there of in my opinion, we were herded off into the next room to hear the lectures and updates from three of the top researchers in the world.  To introduce the three speakers was Dr. Nemery, she is a south Florida pediatric endo that is one of the best out there.  She finished her introduction by saying, ” my goal as a pediatric endo is to not have to treat my patients with insulin.”  Well said.  The first speaker was Camillo Ricordi.  It was very difficult to understand his accent, plus he spoke to us like we were also scientists and doctors, so it was tough to understand what he was talking about.  The main thing that I understood from his lecture is that insulin producing cells generated from human embryonic cells protect mice from diabetes.  That sounds like a good start to me.Ask the Researchers_DRI

Next up was Luca Inverardi.  Once again, this lecture was just as difficult to understand.  I believe that the DRI videotaped every session and plans on putting it up on their website or having the videos e-mailed to the attendees, I will find out and you all know.  The last speaker before the next session was Antonello Pileggi.  Now, by the time he started to talk, I think the whole crowd was becoming hungry, very hungry.  It was becoming difficult for me to concentrate because my stomach was taking over my brain.  The next session was the most informative in my mind.  “Ask the Researchers”

One of the first questions asked was asked in a “dummy” type of way, which was better for the people in attendence.  A lot of the research that is done can be classified into two parts, there are the “attacker” cells that cause diabetes and then the “victim” cells that get killed which causes diabetes.  The question asked why all the research is done figuring out how to help the victim cells, but why isn’t research being done to stop the attacker cells?  The scientists discussed that there is research going on in that area, but it doesn’t look as successful as the research being done on the victim cells.  Dr. Jay Skyler is one of the worlds most respectable doctors / researchers of diabetes.  Someone had asked a question on why there is such an epidemic of diabetes now and although there were a lot of answers Dr. Skyler describe it as there being a lot of cases of Type 1 plus type 2, an overweight child with type 1 which makes them become even less insulin sensitive and causes type 1 at a faster rate.  I am not sure how this next statement relates to diabetes, but he talked about how foreign countries feed their young feces in order to expose them to germs at early ages.

The next question was the mFood from DRIost important to me because I had heard so many different numbers and percentages.  “What are the chances that a child of a type 1 will also have diabetes?”  Well here is the breakdown.  If the father has diabetes, then there is a 6% chance, if the mother has diabetes then 3% and then if both parents do, it is 15%.  The reason that the 3% difference is there between men and women is due to unexpected abortions.  The final question was asked about an artificial pancreas.  Although an artificial pancreas can become a great tool in management, it is not a cure.  There is one main reason why.  In type 1 diabetics, when we eat the insulin that we then bolus with, or the artificial pancreas releases will never catch up to the food.  Meaning that 2 hours after you eat, your blood sugar may look normal, but in between those 2 hours your blood sugar has spiked which is still causing high blood sugar numbers.  In order to fix this, you must be able to anticipate the food that you are going to eat.  With an insulin pump or MDI even, you can do this.  You can count your carbs before eating and bolus, 10-15 even 20 minutes before the food touches your mouth.  Which, when lunch time came at the conference, we didn’t know what was for lunch until it was right in front of our face so there were 4 diabetics at my table all wondering when and how much to bolus, not a good move on part of The Signature Grand.

The final part of the conference, well for me at least because I had to leave at 2 p.m. to get somewhere that I had plans for a long time to be at, was about connecting the community and involved a panel with Jeff Hitchcock (Children with Diabetes), Manny, Scott Strumello, Kerri, and Ellen Ullman also with Children with Diabetes.  There were a few questions thatConnecting the Community Panel were prepared for them about how the diabetes OC has helped them, why they started, and advice tips from them.  A few quotes and answers that I really liked from each of them are listed below:

Scott – Diabetes is too much about glycemic control and not about the other feelings that go along with it.

Kerri – There was only bad things about diabetes, there just had to be more to it than that.

Jeff – We all seem to be invisible so this gave us a voice.

Ellen – As a parent, it gives you a chance to vent because you don’t want to do it in front of your kids.

I hope that this was somewhat helpful.  You can check out the other’s blogs as well because I am sure they will have some updates also.

Have a great Monday.

Is Diabetes a Disability?

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Here’s a question for you: Is diabetes a disability?  This question came up while I was reading an article in the October issue of Diabetes Forecast.  There is an article titled, “Cracking the Case.”  Long story short, Jeff Kapche was denied a position at the FBI because of his diabetes.  He filed suit against them stating that they didn’t hire him because of his diabetes.  The FBI said that his diabetes is not a disability because he manages his diabetes well.  The court favored Kapche.  The case is still is heading back to the Federal Court of Appeals for another review.

There is no easy answer to this question, it may seem like there is, but there isn’t.  Let’s look at it from all sides.

Diabetes IS a disability

When you have diabetes(type 1) there are certain things that you must do in order to live a healthy life.  You must check your blood sugar, take insulin whether it is from an insulin pump or syringe, be able to have access to glucose in case of an emergency and many more things that we don’t have to get into at this time.  This can definitely hinder your processes of doing normal day to day or daily job tasks.  If you are working an extremely physical job then your blood sugar is more likely to drop faster, so this is where diabetes can be considered a disability.

Diabetes IS NOT a Disability

Even with all of the things that you need to do in order to properly manage your diabetes, they do not have to hinder your daily life or your day to day tasks.  If you are doing the things that you need to be doing, then you can control your diabetes which does not allow it to become a disability.  Whether you are wearing an insulin pump or taking multiple day injections (MDI), you can control your levels.

My 2 Cents

Here’s my 2 cents.  Diabetes is in no way a disability.  I live a normal life, I just so happen to be diabetic.  In the 6 years that I have had diabetes there has not been one single time that I have had to say, “no I can’t do that because I have diabetes.”  I eat ice cream cake for birthdays, I ride roller coasters that go upside down(Manta @SeaWorld)Manta_SeaWorld while wearing a pump hooked to my hip, I test my blood sugar at the table, at the desk, in the bathroom, at work, at the dinner table, I do everything someone without diabetes does, but more!  I don’t see diabetes in any way being a disability.  With proper management, you can control it.  A disability to me is something that you can’t control.

I think using diabetes as a disability is a scape goat for a lawsuit. Sure, there may be a reason that you don’t get a job because of diabetes, but that is a discrimination, primarily based upon ignorance and the cost of your health to the company hiring you.  So, if you are going to file a suit against somebody for discriminating against your diabetes it should be because you are defending that it isn’t a disability and that you are able to do the job just the same as someone without diabetes.  Instead, the guy in this article is fighting the FBI and saying that he was denied the job because he DOES have a disability and the FBI is claiming that his diabetes is not a disability.

This irritates me.  To think that the ADA is doing a 2 1/2 page article in their magazine talking about how diabetes is a disability.  What kind of negative thinking is that?  Not the kind that I want to think about.  How about they write articles about how it’s not a disability, but people’s pure ignorance to think that we can’t do something just because we have diabetes.  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that I’m not going to have an organization that is supposed to be furthering advocacy for the disease I live with, start to take steps backwards.

If you want to accept diabetes as a disability, then be my guest.  That’s your life decision.  But I’m not going to let this damn thing hold me down!

I would love to hear ya’ll feedback.

Diabetes Aside, What Do You Do?

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

What do you do?  I know that the number one thing that majority of us have in common is that we all have diabetes, or know somebody with diabetes.  But I want to know a little more.  What do you do, what is your passion?  What do you do for a living?  How many children do you have?  What do you do for fun, what are your hobbies?  I know some of this stuff about some of you, but I’d like to know more about more of you.  So, if you feel comfortable, please comment what it is that you, or what your passion is.  Put diabetes to the side and let’s know the rest of us.

Here’s a little about me.  I am an internet marketer.  I love the internet and geeky computer things.  I love social media, I love SEO.  I love blogging.  Currently I also coach a pop warner (12-14 yr old) football team in East Boca.  We are having a rough season.  The kids are 0-8, a real life version of the Little Giants, especially since our name is the Giants.  I have a girlfriend, Amanda, that I have been with for 4 years.  I do plan on marrying her, just isn’t the right time to make that move yet.  I moved down to south Florida from PA, where the rest of my family still lives.  My direct family consists of my mother and father who both turned 50 this year.  And one brother who turned 29 in September.  His wife is expecting their first child in just a few weeks.  I am extremely excited to become an uncle.

I enjoy watching football, Philadelphia Eagles, baseball, Philadelphia Phillies, hockey, Florida Panthers, basketball, Orlando Magic, and NCAA football, Virginia Tech and NCAA basketball, Michigan State.  Yes, I know my sports teams are all over the place, but there is a reason for each of them.  If you’re curious, here we go.  I like Orlando Magic because I became a fan when they signed Shaq back in 1992-93 and stayed a fan since then.  Virginia Tech became my team when a local high school QB went there in 1995 to play there.  Phillies and Eagles, I’m from the Philly area.  Michigan State came from their freshman point guard in 1996, Mateen Cleaves.

That is about it.  That sums up most of my life.  If you have other questions, I am open to answer them.  I look forward to seeing your stories as well.

Diabetes Doesn’t Make Sense Sometimes

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Sometimes diabetes just doesn’t make any sense.  As soon as you think you are understanding it, there it goes again.  Most recent example was last night.  Throughout most of the day my sugar was low, I was eating glucose tabs and Skittles all day at work because it just kept going back down.  When I got home at about 5:30 and went to the gym my blood sugar was right around 110 or so.  I ate, then worked out at the gym for 45 minutes went to Wal-Mart and Target and then came home and checked my sugar and it was up to 230 – something.  Unbelievable.  I didn’t even eat anything that would have caused it to go high like that.  Like I said, it confuses me at times.

Then there are times like Sunday when I went to Olive Garden.  It has been well documented on what happens to my body and sugars when I go to Olive Garden.  I overeat and then next thing you know my sugar is soaring over 350 just about everytime.  So I took just a little more insulin than usual but spaced it out a little more this time with a wave bolus.  Well, instead of my sugar getting up to 350, it was about 300 points lower, about 67 when I tested 3 hours later.  What the heck is that all about?  I have no idea.  Once again, diabetes confusing me.

I guess if I was wearing my CGM I would be able to catch these things a little easier.  But I’m not wearing it.  The sensors that I have are expired, even though I think that they would still work, I have just been too lazy.  I’m not going to get more sensors until next year because of the whole deductible thing.  There was a span in there that I didn’t test for close to 4 hours, so that is my own fault.  Especially when at work I test once an hour, so it’s almost like I am wearing a CGM.

Please remember to dedicate at least one blog post to getting diabetes awareness into the faces of professional athletes so we can have even a bigger voice.

Thank you all.

Diabetes Awareness Month, I am Challenging Jay Cutler’s People – Stand Up, Stand Together

Chris Stocker

In yesterday’s post I brought up the point of not always working together for the same goal.  I think that the way everybody is working together for IDF and World Diabetes Day is phenomenal.  In the month of November can we band together to do one more thing?  Can we work together to get a sport to support diabetes month?  Just like wearing pink for all the games, let’s wear the blue circle on the back of the helmets or on the arm of the jersey’s or on an NBA jersey.  I think this is a huge opportunity for awareness for diabetes.  But where do we start?

We all have a voice online now, so I say we all dedicate a blog post some time this week and Tweet about it all week until people start to listen.  If we can get one celebrity or a bigger voice than myself on board, I think it will be easy.  I know, let’s start with Jay Cutler.  I admire Jay Cutler, as a former quarterback myself, tremendously.  He may be too tough to get to, so how about Jay’s people.  My people can try and get in touch with his people.  Wait, I don’t have people, I have a blog and Twitter account and some other social media accounts.  So, if Jay Cutler’s people are listening, well reading now, I am challenging you.  I am challenging you to get the NFL to support Diabetes the way they support Breast Cancer awareness.

With November 1 coming up which marks the beginning of Diabetes Awareness month, it may be tough, but things happen a lot faster now with the tools that we all have.  By the way, November 1 is my birthday, sorry little side note.  It is also the day the Eagles play the Giants.  But back to the subject.  I know I am not the only one that believes in this and I know for a fact there’s others out there that are more passionate about it as I am, so work with me, let’s all work together.  Think of how big of an accomplishment this can be for diabetes.

Yesterday when JA Happ of the Phillies won the rookie of the year, he announced that the bonus money they receive for winning the award goes to a charity of their choice, he chose the Diabetes Research Institute.  He even talked about type 1 diabetes like he was an educator.  This is what we need, more people like JA Happ.  I would start with reaching out to him, but quite honestly, I want him focusing on sweeping the Yankees, sorry the Philly fan had to come out somewhere in here 🙂

Whether you are type 1, type 2, type whatever, a family member, a friend, a co-worker, if you have even just ever heard of the word diabetes, commit just one post this week, that’s it, just one short post about this and it can be a great start.  I thank you all in advance.