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Confident in a Cure: Diabetes Research Institute

Chris Stocker

Going into my tour of the Diabetes Research Institute, I did not know a lot about the DRI and the research that was going on.  I knew that they were fully dedicated towards research and finding a cure and that if you are a mouse with diabetes, then that’s the best place to go for some help.  I’ve said before that even though I advocate for diabetes, cure and help until we find a cure, I do not understand the scientific and medical background of everything.  I get confused by the long and confusing names.  The DRI did a great job of breaking down what they were talking about.  I’ve spoken to scientist before and understood nothing, I must say that they explained it their way and then broke it down for myself, my mom, dad and Amanda.

The first area that we went to for a tour was in this secret, James Bond looking room.  I thought it was just a wall and then they hit a button and the wall slid over and a scientist walked out.  If I get names wrong in here, please correct me.  In this room, they were using a multi-million dollar microscope that allows you to see into the eye of a small animal to see how the implanted Islets are being treated by the immune system.  Once again, for more details on any of these things I speak about, I encourage you to go to the links I provide to the DRI to get further details.  I will only explain what I understand.  When something new is put into your body, your immune system automatically tries to determine if it’s you or an intruder.  Once it realizes it’s not you, it will attack and eliminate whatever it is.  This microscope allows scientists to see how this process takes place.  Before this technology was available, they could not get an accurate view of how this happens.  The scientists continued to stress that no matter how hard you try, you cannot replicate the real thing with a petri dish.  They know that they must do something to protect these Islets.

And with that, we were taken to another room.  This is where we met Dr. Cherie Stabler.  Her focus is on tissue engineering and developing islet encapsulation devices. An islet huh?  Well, we had just learned that once the islets are transplanted, they are attacked and very few of them actually survive to even do anything of any good.  There are some serious medications that exist to try and help prevent and slow these attacks down, but they could potentially harm other parts of your body, so not everybody can handle the drugs.  What Dr. Stabler is focused on is creating a “home” for the islets to be safe in.  A barrier between them and the immune system that is trying to destroy it.  There is an area near the stomach that would be a perfect home to transplant these islets, so all the different departments of the DRI are working together to get this done.

As a side note, and a pretty serious one, Amanda started to look very pale at this time and she told me she needed water, but there were no fountains around at that time.  Keep in mind that we were standing for nearly an hour now and it was hot in there.  We went into Dr. Stabler’s office to see images of what she was speaking about and as we left, Amanda grabbed ahold of my dad and I and she started to fade out.  And then she passed out for a moment.  This completely freaked me out because it had never happened before.  She grabbed some water and a snack and she sat in the lobby with my mom for the rest of the tour.  She really wanted to see the rest and didn’t want me to not see the rest, so she rested downstairs with my mom.  Luckily she felt perfectly fine and some blood pressure tests are in the near future.  Now, back to the tour that my dad and I continued on.

During this time, I put the iPad away because I had my hand on my phone making sure that Amanda was ok.  We went to take a walk past the area that the Ricordi Chamber is used when a pancreas is received from a recently deceased donor.  At this particular time there was no work going on in this room because there was no recent pancreas to extra islets from.  The next room that we visited did not have anybody in there either.  There was a going away part for one of the scientists and it was around lunch time that we were doing our tour, so I was not upset about that, it was totally understandable and acceptable.  We made a quick stop to the stem cell research lab, which is the one area that I did not take enough notes to fully understand everything, so I will need to do a little more research on that section of the DRI.

One of our final stops was to the lab or Antonello Pileggi, M.D, Ph.D.  Antonello was very passionate about his work when he was speaking to my father and I.  A lot of what he was talking about are things that we had discussed with others throughout the day.  Which drove a great message to me, that everybody is on the same page and that everybody is sharing information with everybody else.  This was the room that had actual live mice in there.  There were not any

studies with the mice going on at that current time.  One thing that was brought up during the conversation was how in some areas of research, they are trying to figure out exactly how Cancer works because, the immune system does not attacked and destroy Cancer cells.  So if they are not destroyed, then why not, and how can that possibly be used to help with the cure of diabetes.

The very end of the tour was basically just a summary of everything that is going on.  During this time, when everything was wrapping up, Dr. Camillo Ricordi walked by on the phone, but had the opportunity to shake his hand, what a privilege.  Like I mentioned several times, I recommend that you go to the Diabetes Research Institute’s website and learn as much as possible about the different studies going on.  If you are every in the Miami area, then please reach out to the DRI beforehand and schedule a tour, it took less than 2 hours.  Also, I highly recommend that you sign up to be a DRInsider and receive up to date information from the DRI.  More to come tomorrow.

***Disclosure: I was not paid in any way be the Diabetes Research Institute to attend this tour, to write posts about it, or to include links.  These are my opinions and thoughts based upon the information that I was provided during my tour.  I am not a doctor, a scientists, or any form of medical professional.***

Diabetes Research Institute Tour Intro

Chris Stocker

This is my first post in a really long time.  A couple weeks ago my parents were getting ready to come down for a week so the weekend before that was Labor Day weekend and I decided to take the whole time off.  I have not posted anything and I made the decision to totally disconnect myself from the online world for the time that my parents were down here.  That was way too difficult to do, so I was caught tweeting a few times or making a few Facebook updates, but I didn’t write anything for a while.  I took time off from this blog, my business blog, my book, and a few other sites I write for.  I just needed a break.

During this vacation, I was able to make my first visit to the Diabetes Research Institute.  What a great time and visit that was!  I have so many things to talk about.  I am not a very scientific person, so my posts are not going to get too technical or use a lot of the scientific and medical terms that were used by the scientists.  Not just for this reason, but because some of the words are too difficult to remember and I can’t understand all of my notes.

Anyway, my posts will start tomorrow of my thoughts.

Diabetes Events in 2012

Chris Stocker

I started thinking about some of my goals for 2012, diabetes and professional goals.  One of my goals is to attend more diabetes events and shows.  This year I went to the JDRF Walk in Boca Raton, the ADA walk in Fort Lauderdale, the Roche Social Media Summit and that was it.  Next year I want to go to ADA Scientific Sessions, Friends for Life, Roche Social Summit again, AADE, and many others.  If I could go to 1 a month, that would be AWESOME.  There are so many different events that it is tough for me to keep up with all the dates, the costs and just to know about the ones that are out there.

There are events going on that I don’t even know about, and if they are things that I could possibly attend, then I would love to know.  So here is my question.  Is there currently a list of diabetes related events taking place in 2012?  If there is not currently a place, then please, let’s use this as a resource for the DOC and add in the comments below the event and date (at last the month), and then we can have a one-stop collection of all events.

Please pass along and share.  Hope to meet more of you wonderful people in 2012.

Diabetes Art Day Part 1

Chris Stocker

I didn’t do Diabetes Art Day last year because I haven’t done any sort of art since like 8th grade.  I don’t like art, because I’m not that creative and I just don’t have the patience for it.  However, I am going to try and do something throughout the day.  This post is going up in the morning, but I will post something later today / tonight as soon as I figure out what kind of art that I can create for Diabetes Art Day.

What Diabetes Games Do You Play?

Chris Stocker

This Saturday I will be going to the Phillies and Marlins game in south Florida because it is the last time that the Phillies come down here.  I will be watching the Virginia Tech game in the early afternoon and head down to the game directly afterwards.  I am so happy that football is back, college this week and NFL next week.  Anyway, on to what I’m trying to get to.  I will be going down to the game a little earlier to tailgate.  It is great to tailgate at Phillies and Eagles away games because there are so many Philly fans no matter where you go.  When deciding to do the tailgating, we obviously had to plan which games we would be bringing with us.  Beer pong table, cornhole, washers and of course a football.  But then this got my thinking.  What if it was a diabetes tailgate?

So, this post is going to end pretty fast, with a simple question.

What type of diabetes games do you play, and please explain how you play them?  I am interested in learning some d-games.

Medtronic Wins Another Customer Service Award

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

So a few months ago I wrote a post about Medtronic winning a customer service award from me because how well they handled my situation when my insulin pump was not working.  I was scared, clueless, and had no idea where to go to for help.  Medtronic was there to ship me a new pump the next day and I was ready to go.  And they even sent me a new Carelink, because I’m an idiot and threw mine away when I got a Mac because it didn’t work.

Anyway, I was trying to log into my Medtronic account online because I needed to re-order test my infusion sets and din’t feel like doing it on the phone because it takes too long.  Well, I couldn’t log in and I couldn’t reset my password because it kept saying that my username and e-mail did not match or exist.  I knew that was not the truth because I had my username saved.  I had to call in my order to Medtronic and it went pretty fast.  I told them about my username and password not working and not being able to reset it.  They put me on hold for like 10-15 minutes and I’m starting to think…ok, here we go, nothing is going to happen.  So I hung up.

About 30-45 minutes later I received an e-mail from Medtronic and I thought that it was going to be a default e-mail to follow up on the call or to give a status update of my order.  Nope, it was a personal e-mail from somebody in customer service to follow up with me on the online login issue.  I did what they told me to do and it still didn’t work, so I let her know.  She had the IT department do some sort of reset on my account and told me to log in with a temporary password.  So I did, and it worked.  The customer service experience was not over yet.

I was waiting on my doctor to fax a prescription in for my order to be shipped, so the customer service agent who was e-mailing me  back and forth faxed another request to my doctor.  This happened on Friday, so I e-mailed today to follow up with her and see what the status of the order was.  She said that they got a prescription, but it wasn’t enough for what I had ordered, so she said that they could only ship what the prescription said.  That was fine with me.

So, after this experience, Medtronic has officially won me back over.  This is two times in a row that they gave me the best customer experience that I can ask for.  This is a diabetes company doing things right.

Oops, That Blood Sugar was my Fault

Chris Stocker

Yesterday was one of those days.  You know, the days where you blood sugar goes from like 160 to 450 within a few hours and you have no idea.  Mainly because you didn’t test your blood sugar for almost 6 hours.  Sunday’s are my relaxation, cleaning, and shopping for the week day all in one.  I ate lunch and bolused and my blood sugar was fine.  When dinner time came I realized that I was out of my insulin in my pump, which is weird because I never let that happen.  Thinking back on it, I do remember hearing the warning beeps several times throughout the day, but I didn’t do anything about it to check and see how much insulin was left.

In a sense, I pretty much just told myself that I knew I was getting low, but that  didn’t have to do anything about it right then and there.  Not a good idea.  This is what leads to blood sugars of 450.

Luckily it came back down.  I am writing this post now at about 6:30 in the morning and my last sugar level was 219.  A hell of a lot more acceptable.

Well, have a good day everybody.  I am very close to making a few huge announcements.  I can’t make them yet, but soon, hopefully, very soon.

I’ll Be On DSMA Live Tonight

Chris Stocker

So today’s post is short and quick.  I will be the guest on DSMA Live tonight.  I am honored that I was asked to be a guest on this awesome show.

Please go to http://dsmalive.com/2011/08/23/dsma-live-with-chris-stoker-on-8252011/ and click on the Live Feed link at 9:00 PM EST.

Hope you all can listen.

Steve Jobs, Jimmy Valvano and Diabetes

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

The agency that I work at has a pretty large free library of business related books, so I have definitely been taking advantage of this lately.  I like to read these business books because they give me a lot of motivation, not just for the business world, but in my personal and diabetes world as well.  I just recently finished, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.

This book was awesome.  Let me give a quick background.  About 3-4 years ago I could not stand Apple.  I hated everything Apple, I hated Google, I hated all that hip stuff, I thought you were a douche bag just because you owned it.  Well, I purchased an iPhone 2.5 years ago and my entire life changed after that.  I still own an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Pro, and am purchasing an iMac very shortly.  I am now part of the Apple culture.  And with that, Steve Jobs is now one of my idols.  The book is about his presentation skills and how powerful his presentations are.  When he speaks, people listen.  He gains people’s attention, their lives stop to hear what he has to say next.  There were a few quotes that stood out to me in this book.  The first one was when Steve Jobs had said, “Doing the right thing can never be the wrong thing.”

At first, I was like…well yea, duh, if it’s right then it can’t be wrong.  But then when I thought about it more, doing what you feel is the right thing to do does not always turn out with the best outcome, but that does not mean that it still was not the right thing to do.  I related this to my diabetes by saying that eating ice cream at my niece’s birthday party is the right thing to do, no matter the outcome.  Testing my blood sugar and eating healthy foods is the right thing to do.  Even if my blood sugar spikes after a perfect meal, I am not going to let it get me down, because I did the right thing, and that can never be wrong.

The next quote that moved me, which there are plenty of quotes similiar to this, especially from Gary Vaynerchuk (this is a link to a post on my other blog about why I was fired because of my passion for owning my own business several years ago).  But Jobs had said, “I’d rather live my passion then be buried a rich man, if you are not happy, make a change.”  This doesn’t just go for money and wealth, but it relates to my health as well.  You know what, I have been extremely unhappy with the way my health has been going down hill, and 2 weeks ago, I made a serious change in my life and I have lost weight, and I can see the differences in my body.  I wasn’t happy, so I made a change.  I stopped bitching and complaining and hoping for a change, and did something about it.

Finally, my last piece of motivation for this post has nothing to do with this book, but something that I go back to all the time, whenever I need a boost of motivation is this amazing video.  Please, it is 5 minutes, just watch it:


And for me personally, where he says cancer, I say diabetes.

Football and Diabetes Cause Stress Also

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Yesterday I talked about the only real stress about diabetes that I get is when it comes to re-ordering my pump supplies.  Of course there is other stress involved, but I don’t allow myself to stress for very long.  Except when it comes to one major thing, football.  That is right, my Philadelphia Eagles stress me the f*ck out!  This year is going to be even more stressful because of all the off-season acquisitions that we received.  I am not going to speak too much about football here, but basically every year that football starts my blood sugars get a little out of control.

I go to the bar to watch the games and I am  constantly snacking throughout the whole game.  But not this year.  I am challenging myself not to snack throughout the game and I am also going to try and eat before I go to the game and then after the game in order to save money while I am there.  I am also working on my mental toughness that I had in high school and was very disciplined and not lazy and it was all about mental toughness.

I don’t ever bring my meter with me to the bar.  Once again, this is changing as well.  It will go into Amanda’s purse and I will test my sugar after the first 3 quarters and then the fourth quarter, well, it’s the fourth quarter and I am just going to have to tough it out.

Bring on football and bring on the stress!