Raise your voice

I'm always a proponent of speaking up. Speak up against injustices (big ones and small ones), against violence, for good food, on behalf of those with no voices, against bad movies, against bad grammar, for the wonders of chocolate covered pretzels... the list goes on.

Today I'm raising my voice and speaking up about type 1 diabetes. My friend, Kerri, has the disease and she told her blog readers about Raise Your Voice day which is today, 4/14/08. Most people are familiar with type 2 diabetes - the kind you hear about a lot in the news because our country is developing it at an alarming rate due to our fat fat fat high sugar and salt ways. Most people are not, however, all that familiar with type 1. You might have wondered why type 2 was the second when you'd never heard of the first, but that's as far as it goes for most folks.

Please take a moment to read Kerri's blog entry for today. She's eloquent and she's a great advocate for people with type 1 diabetes and the treatments available today and those being researched for the future. She cannot be cured of this disease. She was diagnosed as a small kid and has been dealing with this her whole life. Next month, when she marries her awesome fiance, Chris (Matthew's locker mate from high school), she will wear her insulin pump in a pocket sewn in by her seamstress. When she & Chris want to start a family she will have to take serious precautions and prepare her body well in advance of any possible pregnancy. She will be stuck with needles and prodded by meters every day for the rest of her life... and unless you know her you'd never have a clue she has a disease.

She's in better shape than I am, she's beautiful, she's smart as a whip, funny as hell, and she lives her life with a resolve to keep her diabetes at bay as much as she can. She doesn't let it define her, but it easily could.

Take a moment, learn a little, tell someone else about type 1 today. The more we talk about it the closer we get to more research, closer to a cure, closer to the day that Kerri can walk around without being attached to a machine.