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Today’s guest post is from Sarah Jane who lives in southern Missouri with her parents and two younger brothers, two dogs, and one cat. She is currently studying dietetics at Missouri State University. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1998 at 11 years old.

Blog address: http://sajabla.wordpress.com

Serendipitous

Sarahndipity. That’s the name of the site where I blog. It’s a play on my name and the word serendipity. Sometimes when I tell people about my blog, they ask me what the title has to do with being a type 1 diabetic. I guess at first glance, it doesn’t seem to make sense.

This is the definition of the word serendipity:

n. The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

I certainly didn’t seek diabetes. If I had to pick a disease to live with for the rest of my life, diabetes wouldn’t be on the top of my list simply because of the time and the energy it takes up. But diabetes has brought me some valuable and agreeable things.

Somehow diabetes manages to put life into perspective. You hear of people just going through the motions of life, never really being happy until they are diagnosed with some horrible cancer or disease and then they begin living life to the fullest. At some point in your life you discover that life is finite, that it will someday end. I discovered that at 11 years old when my doctor told me that I could die from kidney failure if I didn’t take care of myself.

Not that I encourage fear as an effective way to get a person with diabetes to manage their blood sugars. It didn’t work too well for me because it took me ten years to really understand what it takes to manage diabetes. I probably didn’t understand that this disease could kill me until I was in college. But now I know that life does in fact end, and while I can’t place a number on when this disease or some other disease or an accident or simple old age will take me, I know that I have to life for today because at some point it will all end. It makes my life feel more meaningful. I watch sunsets and take pictures of flowers and try to spend quality time with the people I love.

So if you’re reading this and you have diabetes, you probably know what I’m talking about and I hope you do the same. If you are reading this and you are lucky enough to be perfectly healthy, I would encourage you to embrace your life and find what makes you happy. It may be as simple as smelling roses, but, although it sounds cliché, let me tell you, it’s worth it.

Today’s guest post is from Christopher Snider from A Consequence of Hypoglycemia.

There’s a strange kind of fear or apprehension that overcomes me when it comes to a guest post. Granted, I’m sure most of the people reading this are remotely aware of who I am. When I think about the nature of this or any other post I’ve written it still amazes me that I’m doing this. Opening up was never easy for me growing up, probably due to a lack of opportunity but it’s not like I was really looking to share my feelings with everyone. But then I spent a couple days in the hospital. Then I tried to manage all of this on my own. Then I found Twitter. And the rest, they say, is history.

When it comes to the Diabetes Online Community, I see us all as a very close family of strangers. We’re a list of avatars and unique aliases. We’re 140 character moments of wisdom. We’re 1000-word posts of inspiration. We’re a photo album of blood glucose meters and continuous glucose monitors. We’re the tangled pump tubing and the overflowing sharps containers. We’re a 24/7 pick-me-up. We’re this, and so much more. And it amazes me.

It’s this family of strangers that knows exactly what you’re going through. We are around during those days that are impossibly unreasonable as well as the days when everything is going right and you feel like hugging the world. I know it’s the shared bond we have in dealing with this disease that brings us together. Now that I think about it, it’s a hell of a common interest to bring together a group of strangers (and their families). Do coin collectors send each other little knitted socks for their newborn child? Do MythBusters superfans make music videos together? Do people with peanut allergies rally behind causes like we do? I’m not saying that we’re the best around…actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

I can’t speak to other communities, but you all make the day-to-day grind of this disease infinitely more manageable. Just look around and see the retweets, the guest posts, the blog post comments, the twitter chat participation, and even the podcast appearances. Even though I’ll wont meet all of you, I know that you’ll be there for me just as I’ll be there for you. As I review this post I can’t help but notice how cheesy it reads, but I don’t care. Even if we didn’t sign up for this, and I’m pretty sure none of us did, we are family.

~Assuming I didn’t scare you off, you can check out my blog, A Consequence of Hypoglycemia, for other posts, podcasts, editorials and whatever else I find to contribute to the madness.

I’m going on vacation tomorrow.

So this is what I will be doing after I get out of work, tips for traveling with diabetes.

Remember to check in for all of the guest posts next week.

Wow, what a long day it has been so far today.  Today was the first day of starting my new job as an SEO Specialist for a large ad agency firm.  Let’s rewind and get to the recap of the weekend however.  Friday night was a nice dinner with Amanda at Carolina coal fire pizza in Delray.  After that we enjoyed some amazing Rita’s Italian Ice as well.  So, let’s take a guess at what my blood sugar did after that night?  You guessed it, went over 400 at one point.  I never eat pizza anymore, but I just said screw it, I’m going to enjoy it tonight.

Saturday was a very, very, very long day.  It started at 7 a.m. with getting ready to go to the Red Bull FlugTag down in Miami.  If you don’t know what this event is, you have probably seen commercials on tv for it before.  It was where people create these large “flying” machines, run full speed off of a 30 foot platform and see who can fly the furthest….get it, Red Bull “gives you wings”.  It was about 100 degrees that day, with no shade, so it was so hot and just so damn irritable.  Once we got home from that it was Amanda’s uncle’s 50th birthday party, so time to get the bathing suit on and head over for some beer, food, and pool.  Well, my site fell off in the pool at about 9:30, and we didn’t go home until about 10:30.  My blood sugar was not that high once I got home, it was about 275.  The way I looked at it was that my pump was going to be disconnected anyway because I was swimming, so what did it make a difference that it fell out?

Yesterday was another day of swimming at Amanda’s house because it was just so freakin’ hot.  After that we went to Olive Garden.  Then it was back home to relax and get ready for the first day of work.

So, that leads to today.  Up at 7 a.m. to have coffee and get ready and didn’t get home until 7.  Went for a nice walk, ate dinner and here it is, almost 9 p.m. and my day is finally over.

Time to get to bed soon and do it all over again.

Below is a video for an open invitation for guest post for the week of July 24-31.  If you can’t view this video, please click here.

This weekend recap includes an extra day I guess, today.  I didn’t really have anything planned for 4th of July this year, because I just wanted to relax this year.  Friday night wasn’t really anything special.  Amanda and I went to the Ruby Tuesday and I overate on the salad bar, what a surprise.  My blood sugar was about 355 a few hours after eating there.  We ate kinda early, which sucked because I knew I would be hungry before I went to bed.  We watched a movie, The New Daughter, kind of a weird movie.  My suspicions were right and I was hungry again, but we decided to just go with popcorn, which is an amazing snack.

Saturday during the day I did absolutely nothing.  I laid around pretty much all day long until it was time to head over to the sports bar to watch the UFC fight.  That is pretty much everything there is to recap for Saturday.

Yesterday was not much more fun.  In the morning, I headed over to the beach to check out a sand castle contest, but there were only 4 designs in the whole thing, so that was pretty much a dud.  Amanda and I had lunch on the beach, which was fun until it started to down pour like crazy.  I left my meter in the car, which pissed me off because I went to the bathroom like 3 times in an hour, so I wasn’t sure if it was the iced tea or because my sugar was high, and I didn’t want to run a couple block back to the car to get the meter.  That is why I always try to remember and make sure that I have my meter with me!

Well, today is the final day of this holiday weekend, and it is raining again.  I am going to enjoy laying around the house doing absolutely nothing.  I should use this time to go grocery shopping because there is not a single thing to eat in this condo, but that can wait until tomorrow.  Speaking of tomorrow, I have some big news that I will announcing tomorrow.

Until then, have a great day everybody!

This is a very quick, simple post.

Happy 4th of July everybody.  Happy birthday America!

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I would like to read everybody’s review of the social media summit, but I’m not sure who wrote a post speaking about it.  I think that I have read them all, but I don’t know if everybody had a chance to, so it would be good to have one central location for everybody to read them and discuss them.

Does anybody know if somebody is already doing this?  Is Roche?

Isn’t this part of being social?

For the month of July, I have decided that I will attempt to complete another NaBloPoMo month.  I was able to successfully do it back in November 2009.  This created a challenge for me and I love new challenges.  It is definitely hard because sometimes you run out of things to blog about.  But, since this is something that I am passionate about, subjects or topics will always be there to be discussed.

Today’s post is pretty short because I am trying to read all over the posts about the Roche Social Media Summit.

This morning I woke up at 7:00 am very excited to meet all of my fellow DOC friends.  I have been wanting to meet all of you in person for a long time and this was finally the time to do it and also get a chance to have our voices heard.  That excitement turned into sadness and disappointment very quickly however.

When I went to go pick up my rental car from Budget this morning, which was already paid for by the way, they told me that they would need to put a $500 hold on my card.  Well, 6 months ago I cancelled all of my credit cards because I am trying to pay them off, and I just came back from a weekend vacation for Amanda’s birthday, so $500 just sitting in my bank account for nothing is not something that I have.  I also don’t have a reliable enough car to drive to Orlando and back.

So, I am now sitting at home watching Law and Order: SVU.

I am very, very disappointed and will never use Budget rental car services ever again in my life.

This sucks