One Relaxing Weekend!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday. Chris and I got in some great quality time since we both start school today! Unfortunately, his classes are from 5-7pm each night which means we won't be seeing much of each other all summer. [Mine are online!] If all goes well, he will be a REAL engineer by the end of the summer, so proud of you babe ;-)

On Saturday I worked a little and Chris headed down to Birmingham to SCUBA dive with the boy scouts he has been training, then we caught a movie with one of his friends. [The Hangover 2...whoa.]

Sunday we helped Pam with her tornado house some more. It really feels never-ending. Then we had some lounging time with Chris's mom and brother.

Yesterday we headed to downtown Madison, where I played in the Madison Community Band for a Memorial Day service. I love serving my community, even in such a small way. Then Chris and I went thrifting, worked on the house and had our own little cookout [turkey burger wraps and grilled pineapple, yummmm]!!!!!

Hooray for relaxing weekends!!!

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The road to curing Type 1 Diabetes

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On any given day I feel pretty isolated with this disease - I'm the only T1D in my group at work, the only one in mission control, the only one in my family. I go through the logistics of calling insurance companies, ordering supplies, changing sites and troubleshooting malfunctions mostly on my own. Even those pesky carbs really only get counted in my brain, no group think for a meal bolus here. But there is b…

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To be honest, I never thought the day would come when I would say, "I've had Type 1 Diabetes for 20 years."

20 years ago a cure was 'just on the horizon' and as an 11 year old kid I took that phrase to heart - I had to. My continued existence was based solely on whatever the endocrinologist said - pancreas, insulin, autoimmune, blood sugar, islet cells, shots. I didn't know what I didn't know at that point. I had never heard of an insulin pump or glucose meter. Ketones and hyperglycemia were just big, meaningless words. Carb ratios and counting might as well have been formulas for travelling at light speed. I wasn't ov…

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Nine years ago (9 years ago?!), I was still waiting for the black-box-doctors at the FAA to clear my Class III medical certificate - a requirement for my then-job flying on experimental Army helicopters. To 'pump' up my diabetes-dejected ego (ha), Dave let me tag along with him for his MH-47G proficiency simulator runs. That tiny taste into helicopter flight dynamics gave me so much appreciation for him - hovering is literally the.hardest.thing, I was tense the entire time and constantly felt like I was one small cyclic movement away from losing control. Even though I knew in the back of my mind we were in a (moving) simulator, my senses got lost in the weight of the flight controls, the movement on the screens, and the hard thumps when I hovered right into the ground.

At the end of the runs I asked him how he has the stamina to pilot this monster of a helicopter for literally 15 hours straight (these special ops versions can mid-air refuel). He sort of laughed, but his answer…

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