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Until there’s a cure, there’s Friends for Life

Sometimes it feels like my daughter has had diabetes for 100 years even though it’s really only been nine. In the early days after her diagnosis, I couldn’t imagine how a tiny glass vial full of insulin would become her lifeline and how without that vial pictures like this one might not be possible.

When I think about my daughter, I envision that she is like she is in this picture.

She’s happy and helping her dog enjoy his first visit to the Atlantic Ocean. The wind is blowing in her hair and I can see a smile in her side profile. She’s healthy and having an experience that every 12 year old should have….being a kid at the beach with her dog.

What I don’t see in this picture and what I try not to focus on is the insulin pump clipped to her waistband. I don’t see a parent off on the side armed with glucose tabs and juice boxes. I don’t see the tiny holes in her fingertips from where we’ve checked her blood sugar so many times that there are permanent scars. I don’t see a diabetes bag close to her so that her CGM will send a reading to her phone that I can then follow on my own phone. I don’t see diabetes in this picture. I see a kid in this picture.

Thanks to the discovery of insulin, Ava can make happy memories like this one. She can live her best life thanks to science and research and technology companies that keep pushing forward and trying to find a way to make diabetes less “present” in the lives of people with type 1 diabetes. For all of us affected by diabetes, isn’t that our goal? Focus more on the living and less on the living with diabetes?

The Children with Diabetes organization and the Friends for Life conferences are as important to us as the insulin that Ava takes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Just like with the insulin that helps to keep Ava alive, CWD helps to keep our whole family alive through our connections with other families just like us. Even when we feel alone, we know that we are not alone thanks to our big worldwide extended family of Fiffles.

100 years ago, insulin was discovered as a way of helping to keep people with type 1 alive and thriving. Today, CWD and Friends for Life is a way to help keep us all thriving as we surround ourselves with a community that, at first, no one wanted to join but now, no one wants to leave. I hope that you will join our family as we support the 100 Years of Us campaign as we try to make the Friends for Life magic possible for more families through scholarships and conference funds.

As we like to say “Until there’s a cure, there’s Friends for Life.” I’d like to hope that even after there’s a cure, there’s still going to be Friends for Life filled with healthy and happy images like this girl…..at the ocean….with her dog…..not even thinking about diabetes at all.

 


In celebration of the milestone 100 years since the discovery of insulin, we want to recognize everything we can do as a community – diabetes doesn’t hold us back.

Find out more about our 100 Years of US campaign at cwd.is/100Years.

AvaOnBeach

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