I love science. LOVE. Love. love. SCIENCE.
And I have diabetes... (because my busted pancreas told me so)
So naturally my favorite advocacy effort focuses on research funding. I volunteer for JDRF at as many of their outreach events as I can. I'm not a great fundraiser - I'd rather tell you about all the interesting advancements and explain all that I know about beta cell encapsulation, insulin pump algorithms, and the latest and greatest and not quite out in the world yet (but in a few decades?) glucose responsive insulin. I'm not an expert but I am a doctoral student in the biomedical field so I hear tidbits here and there. I understand more of the science than your average bear.
Even though I've been kind of crummy at it lately, I also love the sense of community that we build with each other and with the world at large. Twitter's my go to for connecting with the diabetes online community and unfortunately I've let it go a little silent (along with this blog). BUT I do try. My favorite days are when someone asks "why are you stabbing yourself?", "should you be eating that?", or "is that a beeper?". Guerilla advocacy -- answer their questions and teach them a tidbit or two about diabetes. Almost everyone knows someone with diabetes at this point, and yet there's such a lack of knowledge and serious judgement out there. So I'm educating the world one person at a time.
