Seattle is an exciting city with a lot to offer, including fish-tossing at Pike’s Place Market, the original Starbucks, a once futuristic looking Space Needle, and fabulous weather for people-watching in the summer. None of the usual suspects, though, were what drew me to Seattle this July; as a diabetic, what I was interested in was the Benaroya Research Institute, a research center tucked beside the Virginia Mason Hospital, dedicated to understanding the immune system and autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. I came to...

My father was a tough guy.  In the style of his era that meant he wore a hat with the brim slightly angled over one eye.  It meant that he favored movies starring George Raft or Humphrey Bogart, tough guys, who, like my father, smoked Camels and could hold their liquor. That was about all it took to be a tough guy, cruelty had nothing to do with it.  You couldn’t miss my father’s sweetness, but it’s less painful to remember that he was tough. When he was about 45 his doctor told him that he had sugar diabetes. ...

Two things run strong and hard on both sides of my family: heart disease and type 2 diabetes. As a deluge of medical research tells us, the two are closely linked. Often diabetes precedes heart disease, but in my family–particularly on my father’s side–it goes both ways. My dad had his first heart attack when he was 48, but didn’t develop diabetes until about 10 years later. The long and short of this is that I have to be careful. My last blood glucose test revealed that I’m flirting with the pre-diabetic...

Quinoa plants near Cachora, Apurímac, Peru When I was thirteen, I spent a week in Peru.  It was, in some respects, a great trip – Machu Picchu, llamas, rafting on the Urubama River, and purchasing panchos.  I chronicled the adventure in a journal under the pen name Marcia Smith, marked it top secret, and left threatening messages to anyone (i.e. my brother) who might dare to read it. In that journal are descriptions of a spitting alpaca named Pedro, huge starry skies and general musings on Inca civilization.  The journal’s...

Just a few months ago, shortly after I began to introduce solid foods to my baby Adam’s diet, I noticed a fruity smell on his breath. Almost any mother in such a situation would have said to herself, “I’ve just fed my son banana-and-apple mush, therefore, he smells fruity.” My reaction, however, was different. I leaned in close to Adam’s face, sniffing at his breath the way I sometimes sniffed at his rear to check for a dirty diaper. He grabbed my cheeks and put his mouth on my nose as though I were inviting...

MiniMed Paradigm® REAL-Time Revel™ Insulin Pumps I do not yet have the iPhone 4. I do, however, have the diabetic’s version of the Hot New Gadget– the Minimed Revel, Medtronic’s latest insulin pump. I am very happy to be able to try out Revel temporarily, on loan from Minimed through the Paradigm Pathway Program, so that I can compare this new model to the model I actually do own– the Minimed Paradigm 522. If I like the Revel, I can choose to upgrade my 522 for $400. I will be wearing the Revel for a number...

Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself? In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.” Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable...

Inflammation is inextricably entwined with diabetes.  Usually, when we think inflammation we associate this with a sprained ankle or an infected cut.  We are, however, coming to realize that inflammation can be a much more expansive process that underlies virtually all pathologies.  Simply put, inflammation is the body’s response to danger. This hypothesis was put forward by Polly Matzinger in 1994. Her idea, the Danger Hypothesis was considered controversial by immunologists at the time, but has proved to be a powerful way of...

As a child with diabetes, one of the most frightening reminders of the danger of the disease was the emergency glucagon kit. Not only was it a symbol of the terrifying risk of severe hypoglycemia, it also had a giant needle.  And as I look at the kit today, which I found after digging through some drawers, I have to agree with my childhood self; that’s one big needle! Glucagon kits are part of the emergency arsenal for diabetics; Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly each manufacture the kits, which come in bright red or orange cases...

In the years between early childhood and high adolescence, I spent a lot of time on my bicycle. I loved facing into a breeze with my hair blowing back, pushing off, and standing on the pedals to climb a hill and then sitting for the downward coast. At dusk the neighborhood was quiet and I could hear the adhesive zip of my tires on the road and the click of my gears as I changed them. Around and around I went, mesmerized and free. There were other pleasures. On a lake, my body rested in the top few inches of water, hands and legs...