I am so proud to call this woman, Christel Marchand Aprigliano my friend. Christel is an amazing advocate in the diabetes community. She created her coalition to get more favorable governmental policies for medicines and education passed in Washington for people with diabetes.

Now, with the spotlight and pressure on the obscenely high cost of insulin, on what appears to be outright greed on the part of insulin manufacturers and PBMs, pharmacy benefits managers – who are doing anything but benefitting patients – and with people skipping doses of insulin because they are uninsured or underinsured, Christel appeared on C-Span to discuss the issues. If you’re confused about what’s happening, it’s a good interview to watch.

While I’m sure Christel has a team of people behind her, don’t ever forget what one person can do, what you can do. Getting involved is as easy as hopping over to DPAC and adding your voice. Don’t fear, you’ll be guided through the process. While each one of us makes a difference, a chorus of voices is hard to ignore, as we’re seeing now in the fight to make insulin affordable.

Mark your calendar for five days (May 1-5) of talks given by more than 25 outstanding people in the diabetes community. Their wise counsel, knowledge and positive experiences comprise the third Diabetes Empowerment Summit organized, arranged and passion-driven into existence by Daniele Hargenrader. Daniele is a diabetes coach, personal fitness trainer, author and advocate who’s using her early difficulties with diabetes, diagnosed at age 7, to share with us how she, and we, can go from lemons to lemonade.

Click here to register for the summit, see the schedule of speakers and take advantage of special bonus gifts.

The summit will share education, practices, tools and an entire community of tips and wisdom from PWDs, coaches, authors,  doctors and caregivers who understand what living with diabetes is like – and how to do your best. DiabetesMine today posted a short interview with Daniele about the summit.

Twelve years ago, when I published my first of three books, The ABCs of Loving Yourself With Diabetes, few people gave thought to how vital it is to address emotional health living with diabetes. Today, I help people with diabetes live a flourishing life and share with health professionals globally a way to work with PWDs that engages and fosters their patients’ potential for flourishing.

Two months ago my ABC book was used as a tool at diabetes camp in Costa Rica to allow 70 kids for the first time to express and share their fears and feelings about living with diabetes – and to discover their inner strengths, gain confidence and build resilience. Still, the book is being read by their families, opening up conversations and understanding for the whole family that their child, brother or sister, can live well with diabetes minding it, managing it and respecting it.

Such is available to all of us and I’m thrilled to see our diabetes community of patient advocates broadening resources for everyone like this summit.

I love the expression, “Each one must teach one.” Even better, when each one can teach so many. Hats off to you Daniele!

Just a reminder. If you get a shot of cortisone, like I did for an inflamed nerve in my foot, or perhaps trigger finger, which many people with diabetes get, it will almost surely raise your blood sugar. I got my shot at 6 pm. Luckily at 4 am I woke up, checked my blood sugar, and as you see from my Dexcom, it had risen steadily through the night after midnight to almost 200.

I took a correction shot of rapid acting insulin, stayed up monitoring the drop, took another correction shot at 6 am and my blood sugar came down over the next several hours.

That next morning I increased my basal insulin, Tresiba, by a third and my blood sugar stayed pretty good all day.

The good news is the effect won’t last more than a day or two for most people.

Just be aware to check your blood sugar frequently, check in with your doctor and/or adjust your dose according to your readings.

Lastly, be prepared when the effect of the steroid wears off and you’ve got more insulin in your body than usual, you may experience a low. Correct it and bring your dose back to normal.

Ah, living the diabetes life.

…and so would, I believe, changing the name of prediabetes (you don’t have anything) to “stage 1 diabetes”, you certainly do.

This name change for prediabetes, and staging concept, was also imagined by a graduate medical student last year, now physician, Trent Brookshier. Trent conducted research on the idea showing people’s attitudes, perceptions and sense of urgency are significantly different based on what we call this condition of higher than normal blood sugar. A majority of people say they would take action if diagnosed with stage 1 diabetes as opposed to prediabetes. Full post here at IDF Diabetes Voice.