One could argue that despite all the big talk about combating the diabetes epidemic, lots of prominent organizations seem to be getting very little done. The field of diabetes education is facing a crisis, with so little professional support and funding to cope with the torrent of new patients coming their way.

May is big birthday action month at our house. Our two older girls turned 9 and 11 (OMG, I’m getting old!), so over the weekend we thought it might be a nice idea to invite 12 giggling, shrieking schoolgirls over for a backyard campout in tents with snickerdoodle birthday cake and roasting s’mores and glow bracelets and teeny-bopper films on DVD. What joy! It was just too calm around here apparently (NOT).

Sometimes delightful, inspiring things come from the most unlikely of sources.

Welcome back at last to the Diabetic Partner Follies, a series of guest posts from the Loved Ones and partners of us PWDs (People with Diabetes). Wow, hearing about this disease from the other side is not pretty. Not pretty at all. Please read this latest heartfelt contribution from a partner who is, well, … just depressed about her family’s state of affairs.  

People, this is a friendly reminder that there are now just three weeks left until we close the DiabetesMine Design Challenge competition for entries (deadline: Monday, June 16, 2008 at midnight).

The idea behind this contest is to foster innovation in diabetes design and encourage creative new tools that will improve life with diabetes.

Welcome to the newly refreshed and updated DiabetesMine.com. These changes have been a long time coming, and I’m very excited and hope that the new look accomplishes all its goals while still providing you that warm fuzzy feeling you love. (Ahem.)

If ever two things were once considered mutually exclusive, they were career and chronic illness. Add to that being a woman and the whole thing sounded like a joke. Well, we’ve come a long way, Baby.

I read so many articles and blog posts on health and diabetes and technology and business that sometimes my head just spins.  But it usually doesn’t take too long for some sort of theme to congeal for me — some thought thread that connects to my life and inevitably to this exasperating health condition that permeates it.  This past week, the thread that emerged was words to live by.

How safe are the medicines we’re all taking?  Who’s to know?  As good Americans, we tend to put our faith in the system and assume that the authorities have it covered.  After all, they’d get sued or something if this stuff wasn’t safe, wouldn’t they?

It always kind of ticks me off when people say that managing your diabetes is “like brushing your teeth.” It’s a helluva lot more work than that. But the one similarity is that it is kind of habit-forming. I always hold the toothbrush at a certain angle, and pretty much get the same (however effective or ineffective) results every time I brush. I guess the same is probably true for most of my diabetes habits: