Tag Archives: diabetes awareness

Health

Time to Update My Goal

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success2.pngWhen I filled out the online registration form last Wednesday, I was asked to set a fund-raising goal for the Walk to Cure Diabetes.  I decided to go with the recommended individual goal of $100.  When I set it, I never imagined that I would’ve reached that goal this soon!  I’m grateful to those generous people who have sponsored me already.

However, with more than a month still remaining before the Walk, it wouldn’t make sense for me to just quit my fund-raising efforts.  After all, I still have plenty of friends I haven’t asked yet.   So with a sense of accomplishment and a desire to press forward, I have decided to double my fund-raising goal.  I figure that since I managed to get enough support to raise $100 in less than a week, it shouldn’t be much trouble to raise another $100 in the next month!

I would like to thank all of my current sponsors who have helped me meet my first goal so quickly.  And for those who are still debating about donating, I’d encourage you to give whatever you can.  Even $10 helps!

Thank you for your support.

Health

Check Out “The Blood Sugar Dance”

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October 14 2007 day 2 - Insulin syringes

Image by DeathByBokeh via Flickr

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be diabetic?  Have you ever wondered what exactly the deal is with the constant testing of blood glucose levels?  Then check out my latest post over at Musings of a JDRF Supporter, in which I talk about why monitoring blood sugar levels is so important and why living with type one diabetes is more complicated than just injecting insulin at regular intervals.  To give you a small teaser:

Even the process of giving a regularly scheduled injection is not
entirely straightforward.  When determining how much insulin to
administer, a diabetic must take into account their current blood
glucose level, the amount of carbohydrates, and their anticipated level
of physical activity (which also affects blood glucose levels) over the
next several hours.  Based on this information, a diabetic can make an
estimate of how much insulin they need and inject themselves.  Such
calculations are not precise however, and a diabetic needs to check
their actual blood glucose level periodically after administering
insulin.

In a future post, I want to talk about insulin pumps and how the issues I bring up here impact the way they work.

Around The Blogosphere, Health

New Blog for the Walk

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sneakers.jpg
I’ve decided to create a new blog to post my experiences Walking to Cure Diabetes this year.  In keeping with the “Musings” tradition I’ve started, I named that blog The Musings of a JDRF Supporter.

There are two main reasons I decided to create a blog specifically for the walk.  The first reason is that I want to use my new Palm Pre Plus to live-blog pictures and brief comments during the walk itself.  Unfortunately, the current selection of blogging applications for the Pre are rather few in number, and I shudder at the thought of trying to use the Movable Type client on the Pre’s web browser.  (The browser is good, but I’m not convinced that it’s that good!)  As such, I determined that my best bet for live-blogging the walk was to create a WordPress blog.

The other reason I’m doing this is because I’m trying to convince JDRF — either on the national or local level — that the blogosphere is an as-yet untapped resource for them in terms of raising awareness of both their organization in general and the walk in particular.  When I contacted them about putting my fund-raising thermometer on my blog (which they don’t support) or getting images to use (the national organization ended up referring to my local chapter), I realized this didn’t appear to be a common request, which I find odd.

I understand that their focus is mainly on supporting MySpace and Facebook, which seems to be a common practice these days.  But in many ways, I still think blogs offer a level and depth of promotion that social networking sites don’t always offer.  Blogs offer the opportunity for synchroblogs (also called blogswarms and blog carnivals).  They offer the opportunity to post a lot of informative information about type 1 diabetes and the research being done to improve treatment and even find cures.  In effect, it’s a way to generate more interest and support by being informative.  I think there’s a bit of value in that.

So I’ve created my blog to showcase some of the things that can be done.  Hopefully, some folks at JDRF will see it and be interested in getting more bloggers involved in future years.