Here’s something I don’t like: the idea that a piece of technology I rely on to keep me alive could somehow kill me. I’m speaking not of Toyotas, but of insulin pumps — according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal, “the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it has seen an increasing number of hardware and software problems with insulin pumps, tiny devices worn by thousands of diabetics to deliver insulin.” And so on Friday, the FDA brought together an advisory panel of outside medical...

To most people, eight days in Hawaii sounds like a dream.  And while I’m not a sit-on-the-beach kind of person at all — in fact, I hate both the sun and salt water — I am currently one of those people.  My husband and I are on Kauai right now, and there are enough activities — from hiking the Na Pali Coast to kayaking the Wailua River — to keep me very well entertained. But bringing diabetes to paradise is challenging. Most of my vacations tend to be in cities — or, if not urban areas, places...

This morning I was feeling inspired by the interview I did with JDRF’s Aaron Kowalski about the Artificial Pancreas Project,  so I did a little google searching about artificial pancreases.  I was looking for recent news, but instead I came across this article from the New York Times, published on December 7, 1999 — just over 10 years ago. In 1999 I didn’t even have diabetes — I was a college junior, happily eating carbohydrates without fear. But people with Type 1 diabetes might have read this article and...

Today’s a big day for anyone with Type 1 diabetes: JDRF just announced a partnership with the Animas Corporation to develop what they’re calling a “First-Generation Automated System for Managing Type 1 Diabetes.” Translation? They’re trying to make the first-ever artificial pancreas. Very, very exciting. To quote from the JDRF press release: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation today announced an innovative partnership with Animas Corporation to develop an automated system to help people with type...

It is now ten hours later and I have two corrections to today’s earlier post. First, I need to apologize to the pomelo I ate this morning for blaming it for the off taste of my cottage cheese. I tasted the cottage cheese again after drinking some tea and, guess what? It is going bad Whoops. Second, I decided not to take the sensor off my leg, even though I had erroneously reset my CGM and feared that I was going to replace it with a brand new one. I figured I’d play dumb, at least for ten hours, and see what happened....

I am on deadline for another story but must write a quick post about my thumb. Because, simply put, it just fucked up. I was putting together a somewhat nasty breakfast of cottage cheese and pomelo (nasty because pomelo — which is a sweeter version of a grapefruit and is usually delicious –has the unfortunate side effect of making the cottage cheese taste spoiled). No sooner had I set down my cottage cheese and cup of tea on the desk than I heard a dreaded sound: the buzz of my Abbott Freestyle Navigator CGM. (Why does...

My mind is jumping around a bit this morning — I woke up with a Phil Collins song in my head (never a good sign) and immediately had to try to figure out the opening piano section of “Against All Odds.” (D minor to G major works well, in case you were wondering.) And then I found all these interesting things about diabetes to write about. Such as: -Amy at DiabetesMine has a great piece up about a would-be glucometer that uses temperature variations in your ear to measure blood glucose levels. Pretty cool, right?...

Do you ever feel like diabetes gear is addictive? Or, rather, that it doesn’t take long to become dependent on something that, just weeks earlier, wasn’t a part of your life at all? I remember feeling that way when I first got the pump — within two weeks I’d forgotten my Lantus doses and was terrified at the idea of having to go back and figure out how to use long-acting insulin. Ditto my continuous glucometer. I hate wearing the thing (here’s a photo of my latest sensor, on my stomach — check out...

I love my CGM, don’t get me wrong. But there are times when I run into problems with my continuous glucometer, like when it falls off during exercise, or when I rupture a blood vessel and bleed all over the floor (see here – but watch out; there are photographs). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Abbott — the maker of my CGM — got word of my bloody thigh, and sent me a note asking if they could put a customer service representative in touch with me before I lost any more blood — let alone blogged about it. I bring...

It is T minus 24 hours before Thanksgiving, and my family has officially descended. I just spent the morning with my mother at Whole Foods, where I discovered that a taste for triple creme really does run in the family — the amount of cheese we just bought is absurd. My favorite part: when she walked up to the clerk behind the cheese counter and asked the clerk, point blank,  ”What’s the most fattening thing you’ve got?” (This, for the record, is an excellent question to ask at a cheese counter.) I really...